


In the Sky I See Roads

by enigma731, invisibledaemon



Series: Keep the Car Running (Universe) [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post Vol 1, Prequel, actually now it's rated M oops, keep the car running verse, rated T for usT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2019-10-22 01:07:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 75,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17653118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731, https://archiveofourown.org/users/invisibledaemon/pseuds/invisibledaemon
Summary: Gamora doesn’t trust nice things, because the past twenty years have taught her that they are almost always a trap.The plan’s been driving her all along, the need to protect the galaxy from the Orb her guiding light. Now it’s finished and she’s drowning, drifting down and down with no way to begin finding the surface.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HEY EVERYONE!!! Welcome to another fic in the Keep the Car Running Universe! This one, as you probably already could tell, is a prequel. If you're new to the series, it doesn't particularly matter whether you read this first or ktcr first! 
> 
> This one is gonna be shorter than ktcr, but longer than the christmas fic :)

The thing about happy endings is that they’re never actually _endings_.

Gamora allows herself to ride the adrenaline high through the direct aftermath of the battle, through a hurried debriefing by the Nova Corps and the compulsory medical treatment, which is really just a quick exam to determine that her burns are already healing, courtesy of her modifications. She rides it through a rushed interview with the Xandarian press, which is mostly Peter talking, mostly to hear the sound of his own voice. She even manages to ride it through a dinner consisting of food so rich it nearly makes her ill, and a large amount of alcohol that still isn’t anywhere close to a match for her two livers and enhanced metabolism.

It isn’t until she’s back at the Nova hotel, alone in her room because the others have passed out in various rooms of the suite, that reality begins to sink in. 

It’s the bed’s fault, really. Or at least that’s what she’d blame if anyone asked, which isn’t going to happen because she will never, ever give them an opportunity. 

The bed is an absurdly large, absurdly plush monstrosity that looks as though it’s intended for at least three people to sleep in, which gives her an unpleasant mental flash of the Kyln. The sheets are made of silvery fabric that’s impossibly soft against her skin, and climbing into the thing even fully clothed makes her stomach churn with unease.

Gamora doesn’t trust nice things, because the past twenty years have taught her that they are almost always a trap. 

She’s spent as long as she can remember without a bed at all, resting on a thin mat on the cold floor of Sanctuary, because she never sleeps unless she absolutely has to. Which, fortunately, isn’t all that often. Pillows and blankets are too much risk to be worthwhile, too much leverage that can be used against her. She learned that after the first time Thanos offered them. 

She was a child, then, though she’s lost track of the exact number of intervening years. She remembers the blanket, though. It was bright blue, unlike anything else in her quarters, a spot of color in the darkness. It was also longer than she was tall, thick and soft, and given to her as a reward for besting all of her siblings in combat for the dozenth time. 

She remembers the way Thanos smiled at her when he’d presented it, like it was some sort of extravagant _prize_ and not something that was a basic necessity. She remembers waking with Nebula’s knife to her throat, demanding the blanket for her own. She remembers watching it burn, as a lesson to them all, to be better.

Thanos will be disappointed in her, she thinks, her fingers playing along the edge of the too-plush comforter as the knot in the pit of her stomach tightens even further. She hasn’t had much opportunity to find that emotion directed at her, at least on his part. Sure, she’s failed missions before, been injured before, but that was as a child. And never--not once in her life--has she defied him. He’ll be angry about that, and hurt besides. For a fleeting moment she wonders whether he will be _all right_ after such a betrayal, such a costly defeat. Then she swallows it down, disgusted with herself. Defeating him in this had been her entire mission, after all. Yet here she is, still half-enthralled in his manipulations like she might still be a little girl.

The plan’s been driving her all along, the need to protect the galaxy from the Orb her guiding light. Now it’s finished and she’s drowning, drifting down and down with no way to begin finding the surface.

She isn’t aware of it when she begins to fall asleep. One moment she’s lying in bed, cursing downtime, and the next…

The room’s gone dark and impossibly cool, the bed, far too plush only seconds before suddenly smooth and flat and hard under her. She can hear footsteps, slow and deliberate, coming toward her, vibrating through the floor, through her ears, until it feels like her head is spinning with the mix of sound and sensation. She needs to get up, she _needs to get up_ , but she’s frozen in place, powerless over her own body no matter how desperately she commands it to _move._

“Daughter…” comes Thanos’ voice, deep and booming beyond even the footsteps, the pressure of it in her head, in her chest, nearly unbearable. “Why would you betray me?”

She sits up at last with a shout, her chest heaving as she draws in rapid, shallow breaths. The room is still blazing with light that stings her eyes as they struggle to adjust, but she blinks it back and plants her feet on the floor without even half a thought. 

She has to get out of here, has to get away, has to run to the farthest corner of the galaxy, or perhaps straight back to Thanos instead, straight back to offer penance, to accept her punishment before he has the chance to inflict it on someone else. Someone innocent. _She_ is not innocent.

Gamora lets that thought drive her, propel her out on shaky limbs, grateful that she has no possessions to take along. She steps out of her room, shuts the door behind her--and freezes. 

She hadn’t expected any of the others to be up at this hour. They’d all fallen asleep before she had, or they’d at least gone into their rooms with the intention of doing so; and it’s the middle of the night, so it’s too early for them to have woken up. 

But here Peter is, distinctly awake, sitting on the couch in the common area in near darkness. The only light is coming from a small lamp on the end table next to the couch. Not that he needs much light; he’s just sitting there, eyes downcast, headphones over his ears, tracing his thumb over his Walkman almost trance-like. 

Until Gamora comes in, that is. 

She steps into the room and freezes, and Peter’s head snaps up. “Oh! Gamora!” He quickly slips his headphones off and swipes the back of his hand over his cheeks, offering her a wide smile. “Hey! What are you doing out here?” 

“What are _you_ doing out here?” she retorts. Her heart is still racing, her legs are still twitching to _run, run_ , but something is keeping her feet cemented to the floor. Maybe it’s the tear track she can still see running down Peter’s cheek. 

He shrugs one shoulder casually. “Just didn’t feel like being in my room, I guess.”

“I didn’t feel like being in my room either,” she says instantly, jumping on the excuse. And it’s not untrue, really. 

Peter turns around, one arm thrown casually over the back of the couch, and takes her in. He is wearing a too-tight threadbare t-shirt and boxer shorts. She’s still standing several feet away, but she can _smell_ the soap and shampoo from his shower, the minty tang of toothpaste. It’s a strangely intimate thing, seeing him like this, knowing what personal grooming rituals he’s recently completed. When she takes a few steps closer, she notices the burns still raw on his face.

Unfortunately, moving closer also reminds her of her own current appearance. She’d changed out of the filthy Ravager jumpsuit, because there was just no possibility of her remaining in it any longer than absolutely necessary after the battle. But that had left her with only the clothes she’d originally left Sanctuary in, because the Nova-provided pajamas were also not an option; they’re too impractical, too soft, too nice. 

Now she crosses her arms over her chest, realizing that she must look equal parts messy and ridiculous.

Peter clears his throat, as though realizing abruptly that they’re staring at one another, and that this is getting somewhat awkward. “Right! Who needs to be in rooms when we could be, you know, out here?”

She sees through him easily, feels that she probably could even if she hadn’t seen the tears. She can’t really call him out on that, though, because it’s not like she’s actually out here for no reason either. So instead she just nods once, stiffly. “Exactly.” 

He nods back, avoiding eye contact. His thumb is still tracing over the Walkman, like a nervous habit. Something is tugging inside her, the urge to go closer and help him, though she doesn’t have the faintest idea how, what she could possibly say or do when she herself is feeling jittery and panicked, though less so than before. 

“Are you--okay?” she finally asks, the question stilted and awkward in her mouth. 

“I’m fine,” he says with a grin that might have convinced her a couple days ago, but that she can see through now. “You?”

“I am also fine,” she lies. She wonders if he can see through her; probably. But he doesn’t call her out either. 

After a few seconds pass in silence, Peter clears his throat again. “Well, hey, since we’re both out here--by coincidence, you know--why don’t I make us some hot chocolate?” 

Gamora furrows her brow, immediately suspicious that this is some kind of innuendo. Partly because she has no idea what he’s talking about, but also because it’s coming from him. She hasn’t forgotten the weird magnetism he’d seemed to exude on Knowhere, impervious to all her usual defenses until she’d found herself leaning in, wanting--

“Some what?” she asks, quashing those thoughts with a mental hammer. She had wanted him because he’d _made_ her. That’s his whole damn schtick. She _knows_ that. Even saw him turn it on Ronan, sort of, with that idiotic dancing bit.

“Hot chocolate?” he repeats, louder and slower, as if that somehow will give the words more meaning for her. Then he seems to decide that it’s actually a failure of their translators, because he starts fumbling for the sort of roundabout definition that might come through more clearly. “You know, like...chocolate that you...melt, I guess? Or like...it comes as a powder, in a packet, and you add it to water or milk and then you…” He breaks off, making the motion of putting a cup to his lips and then tipping his head back. If he were doing it for real, he would surely be dousing his entire face with the beverage. “You drink it?”

“I am familiar with the concept of a drink,” she says, not sure whether to be offended or amused that he felt the need to mime the action. 

Peter scratches his head with a sheepish smile. “Right. Well, it’s really good. My mom used to make it for me, made me feel better after--lots of stuff.” 

“Oh.” Guilt surges through her, and she suddenly wishes she were a normal person, who would be able to have this conversation without hurting Peter’s feelings, or constantly saying the wrong thing. “I—have never had chocolate,” she finally offers.

Peter’s eyes widen, so large that she’d laugh if she wasn’t so tense. “What, _never_?” He doesn’t even wait for her response before standing up so suddenly that she takes a step back. “That settles it: you gotta try it!” 

Then he’s leaping over furniture to get to the little kitchenette area of the suite, rummaging around in cabinets. “I know I saw some in here,” he mutters, seemingly just to himself.

Gamora blinks, bemused. He’s put his back to her; he’s pretty much never shown any hesitation to do so, as if he doesn’t know she’s called the deadliest woman in the galaxy for a reason. As she watches him putter around the kitchen, she feels a surge of concern for him, that someone who shows that much trust in a person like her is going to get himself killed one day. 

“There was a perfectly acceptable path that didn’t involve jumping over things,” she points out, at the same time crossing the room to stand behind him, watching what he’s doing. A part of her wants to help, but she wouldn’t know what she was looking for anyway. And besides, she’s leaving. Just as soon as she gets an opportunity to do it without having to see the kicked puppy expression she _knows_ he’d get on that stupidly attractive, stupidly vulnerable face of his.

“Yeah,” says Peter, pulling several other boxes off a cabinet shelf and tossing them onto the floor behind him, “but this is an emergency. A chocolate emergency!” He pauses in his search long enough to turn around and look at her. Then he mimes putting something to his ear and talking into it. “Hello, Operator? Yes, this _is_ an emergency. The lady has never had chocolate! Severe deprivation. Yes, please send the chocolate doctor right away.”

Gamora frowns. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Calling the chocolate ambulance!” says Peter, like it ought to be obvious, then resumes rummaging.

She wonders for a moment if he’s making fun of her somehow, is prepared to be on the defensive, but he sounds nothing but good-natured. And ridiculous, of course; a combination he seems to exude quite often. 

“What is an operator?” she asks a bit stiffly, the word foreign on her lips; perhaps there _is_ a translator issue. “Is that a Terran word for surgeon?” 

“Oh, no,” Peter says, a couple of coffee pods falling to the floor as he rifles through a basket. “It’s like--an old fashioned thing. People on old TV shows would say it when they called someone on the phone. They used to hafta call this one person--the Operator--and tell that person who they wanted to talk to. Then that person connected some wires so they could talk to them!” 

“That sounds extremely inefficient,” Gamora says, choosing to believe him even though it sounds strange. “Particularly for emergencies--actual emergencies. Not chocolate ones.”

“You never having chocolate is a real emergency,” he informs her. “But yeah. Terran tech is way behind the stuff we’ve got out here--Aha!” He suddenly grins and holds up a small packet. “Victory!” 

“You have conquered the hot chocolate?” asks Gamora, arching an eyebrow. She can’t quite decide whether she’s teasing or not. It isn’t as though small talk skills are a thing she’s ever prided herself on. 

“Exactly!” he says brightly, then seems to reconsider. “Well, kinda. I have found it and captured it for you.” He holds the packet out toward her like some kind of sacrificial offering, then does a little flourish-bow-thing that ought to be infuriating but somehow makes the corners of her lips twitch, threatening to become a smile.

She suppresses it valiantly. “You know that I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Right,” says Peter, keeping the packet and turning back to the counter. “That’s why only kinda conquered. Still gotta make the stuff.” He busies himself finding cups, then the hot plate that’s been provided in lieu of an actual stove. 

Gamora takes a few steps closer still, until she’s standing practically hip to hip with him so that she can see what he’s doing past his broad shoulders. “Is this how your mother made it for you?” She doesn’t know why she cares, yet here she is with the words falling from her lips.

“No, not quite,” he says, suddenly more subdued. “She made it fresh. This is the instant stuff. It’s not as good, but it’s all we’ve got. And I totally forget how she made the fresh kind anyway.” 

He fills both cups with water and puts them on the hot plate. “It’s also better if you use milk instead of water, but--all we’ve got, you know. It’s still gonna be good.” 

Seeking to get that sad look out of his eyes for some reason--even though she definitely doesn’t care because she’s leaving right after this--Gamora says, “I am sure it will be. It will be the only chocolate I’ve ever had, after all, so it will automatically be the best.” 

He grins. “That’s the spirit!” He seems happier again as he puts his hand over the cups, and she feels a little lighter in response. “I’ll have to show you the real stuff later, though. There’s a place on Krylor that makes the best hot chocolate ever -- besides my mom’s.”

She makes a noncommittal noise, her heart speeding up at the way he says that, so casually, like it’s a given that they’ll be able to go to another planet together. Like he wants to.

Either not noticing or not commenting on her non-response, Peter carries on sticking his finger into one of the water cups. “That’ll do,” he says, taking them off the heat, then tearing open the packet and splitting it evenly between the two cups. The powder disperses immediately, turning the water a light brown. 

“That looks unappetizing,” says Gamora, trying not to notice how large his hands are in comparison to the spoon he's currently using the stir the concoctions. She doesn't know why that should matter when he is making a drink that looks vaguely like mud, or when she is leaving as soon as he goes to bed. 

“It only looks that way because you've never tasted chocolate,” Peter says easily, seeming not at all bothered by the criticism. “This is gonna change your whole life, though. After you try this, you'll see a puddle of sewage this color and get tempted to drink it!” He pauses, seeming to consider what he's just said. “Okay, so maybe not sewage. But you're gonna love it!”

“All right,” Gamora sighs indulgently. He is easily the most irritating person she has ever met in the whole galaxy, yet she finds herself utterly unable to be truly irritated at him. “Is the hot sewage ready to drink yet?”

“Almost!” says Peter, starting to stir the other cup. “When it's the powder, you gotta make sure you mix it really good. Don't want all the chocolate getting stuck to the bottom and going to waste.”

“Yes,” she says dryly. “You wouldn’t want to waste the dirt powder.” 

Peter laughs; just once, a short thing, but it makes her stand a little straighter with pride. She chooses not to think about why. “You’ll change your tune once you taste it.” 

Then he holds one of the cups out to her. When she hesitates, he says, “C’mon. The cup is hot but it’s not gonna burn you.” 

“I am not worried about that,” she says, taking the cup. She looks at the liquid inside, hesitating. For most of her life, she couldn’t trust food or drink another person offered her. The one time as a child she was foolish enough to accept a glass of water from one of her siblings, she would have died were it not for her enhanced taste buds that allowed her to detect the poison. As it was, she still got sick, a weakness that was punished even further by Thanos. 

“Then what are you worried about?” he asks, deceptively casual. 

“Nothing,” she lies. She takes a deep breath, reminding herself that she _saw_ him make it, and that she trusts him, at least far enough not to kill her; farther even. Much more than she should, perhaps, for not knowing him more than a few days. 

He sees through that, though, because of course he does. For all of his bravado, all of his ridiculous foolishness, Peter Quill is excellent at reading people. The ones he wants to, anyway. 

“Ah, I see!” he says brightly, still doing that overly enthusiastic, affected voice. It’s clearly a facade, though she’s not entirely sure what it’s for. “You’re waiting for Quality Control! Which is very smart, actually. Gotta make sure your first time with hot chocolate is just right.”

“Sure,” says Gamora, though she lets her tone tell him that she knows he’s full of shit, that his mud-water could hardly mean less to her, and that she is _leaving_ as soon as he gives her the chance. Well, maybe not that last part. She probably doesn’t actually want him to know that.

He picks up one of the two cups, takes a sip, and nods. “Excellent quality if I do say so myself.” Then he does the same with the other, meeting her eyes over the rim with a look that says he knows exactly what he’s really doing, the gesture of trust he’s telegraphing, and the fact that he’s not openly confronting her about her doubts.

Pushing past the odd swell of emotion she feels at that gesture, and also not acknowledging what they both know he was really doing, she takes the cup back from him and says, “Even though it’s just dirt and water?” 

He smirks. “Even though. It is still chocolate, and there’s no such thing as bad chocolate.” 

“If you say so,” she says. She has to admit that it does smell good. She steels herself, and before she can talk herself out of it, lifts the cup to her lips and takes the smallest sip possible to still get some in her mouth. 

Then she freezes, staring down at the dirt liquid with amazement that she tries to hide. She’s got to keep herself from moaning out loud because this is the best thing she’s ever tasted in her life. 

Judging by Peter’s grin, he can tell anyway. “Like it?”

“Yes,” she admits, deciding there’s no point in attempting to lie about that. “It is--good. Better than dirt.” 

“I guess that’s a good review,” he says with a laugh, and takes a much larger drink of his own, practically gulping it down. 

Gamora takes a larger sip than before but still small, wanting to savor it. The cup is warm in her hands, the liquid warm in her mouth. It seems to warm her up as it goes down. It’s hard for her to believe that this isn’t even the best version of hot chocolate there is, according to Peter. And she’s suddenly inclined to trust his taste. 

He raises his cup and mimes toasting her. She ought to roll her eyes, ought to tell him thank you for the introduction to chocolate, but she doesn’t have time for this kind of distraction when she is a warrior, an assassin -- Instead what she does is reach out with her own dinky paper cup and actually bump it very lightly against his. The grin that splits his face is instantaneous, as if this is the best thing that’s ever happened to him in his life. As if this one small, stupid gesture is better than the fact that they literally saved the world a few hours ago.

“Cheers,” says Peter. “Wanna go sit down while we drink this? Or should I let you go back to bed?”

“I wasn’t in bed,” Gamora says immediately, automatically. It’s weird and stupid and she knows it, yet confessing to something as vulnerable as sleeping has been drilled into her as a liability. 

“Oh,” he says easily, though his expression says he knows she’s lying. “Okay. Well, just so you know, my mom always said hot chocolate was the cure for nightmares.”

“I don’t have nightmares,” she insists, just as much on reflex.

“Well, it’s lucky they cure coincidences too,” he says gamely. 

“I don’t--” she starts, then cuts herself off. She feels a slight blush make its way into her cheeks when Peter smirks. 

“Were you about to say you don’t have coincidences?” he asks, obviously stifling laughter. 

“No,” she says with as much dignity as she can manage. 

He snorts, but it’s not unkind, and he thankfully lets it go. “Well, regardless, my offer stands. I only got to show you one song before, you know. Music goes well with hot chocolate.” 

Gamora presses her lips together, debating. She’s still a little embarrassed, and her instincts are screaming at her to retreat. And besides, she’s _leaving_. There’s no point in prolonging this any more.

But...she really does want to. Peter’s just given her the greatest tasting thing she’s ever had, but more importantly, she knows he’s shared something important with her. This went beyond heating up some water and pouring a powder into it; this was a memory of his mother. And he’s just offered to share another. Despite his attempt at a casual tone, she knows how important his music is to him. 

She may be leaving, but she wants to avoid hurting him as much as possible. 

“All right,” she agrees finally.

“Awesome!” Peter says immediately, almost like he can’t believe she’s agreed. He holds up a hand, palm-forward in what she first thinks is a gesture of surrender. But that doesn’t make any sense--she’s just agreed to do what _he_ wants, not the other way around. Also his face looks a bit triumphant.

Gamora frowns, the mix of embarrassment and irritation returning in an instant. “What are you doing?”

“High five!” says Peter, like she ought to know exactly what that means. He moves his hand the slightest bit closer, then waggles his eyebrows at her. “High five?”

“I don’t know what that is,” says Gamora, defensiveness prickling up the back of her neck again. He keeps _assuming_ that she’ll follow all of his references, and though he’s never been unkind about her confusion--which, really, is more consideration than anyone else has ever shown her, but still -- it makes her feel broken somehow. Deficient.

“Oh,” he says, innocently surprised. “Sorry. It’s just a thing where we kinda--slap our hands together! It means we’re awesome!” 

“Why?” Gamora asks, still irritated, though his stupid grin is lessening it somewhat and she doesn’t understand why. If anything, it should make it worse. 

He shrugs. “I dunno. It’s just a thing. We did it on Earth. It’s fun!” 

He’s still holding his hand up, and purely because she thinks it’s going to be easier to just indulge him than to continue the line of questioning, she holds her hand up too, barely in front of her, waiting. 

“All right!” Peter says happily, slapping his palm so lightly against hers that it barely makes a sound. “High five!” 

“I suppose it was,” Gamora says, still slightly uncomfortable. She puts her hand back at her side. “Would you like to go sit down now?” 

“Yeah!” he says enthusiastically. She follows him to the couch, though she skips the whole jumping over the coffee table part, which he does again. He sits down and pats the cushion next to him. She sits at a reasonable distance, she feels, so that they’re not touching but it doesn’t look like she’s trying to be as far from him as possible. 

“Any requests?” Peter asks, unplugging his headphones from the Walkman. 

Gamora shrugs. It doesn’t matter to her. She’s just going to stay out here until Peter falls asleep, then she’ll leave. 

She takes another small sip of her hot chocolate, which is dwindling faster than she’d like. She has a momentary pang of sadness at the fact that she now knows something this wonderful exists, that things _even more wonderful_ exist somewhere, but probably won’t ever get the opportunity to experience them again. Won’t _give_ herself the opportunity to experience them again, because anything this good still feels dangerous. Forbidden.

“Well,” Peter says thoughtfully, blissfully unaware of the battle currently taking place in her head, “you only got to hear a few seconds of the song I showed you on Knowhere. Wanna hear the rest?”

She shrugs again, because it’s easier to agree than to make a different decision, particularly now that she’s distracted thinking about how after tonight she’ll never again experience music or chocolate or his stupid smile. “Sure.”

“Awesome!” he says again, but does not offer his palm again. Perhaps her agreement on this isn’t awesome enough for that, or perhaps he’s just too distracted fiddling with his Walkman. He presses down one of the buttons, but it doesn’t start playing music. Instead it makes a soft whirring sound, which makes Gamora ridiculously worried that it’s broken or something.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Rewinding,” says Peter, like that ought to be obvious. “Should be just about…” He lets his finger up and she hears the beginning of the familiar melody begin to play again. He grins and does a fist pump, clearly congratulating himself. “There!”

“Is there not a way to simply select the song you want?” she asks, looking at the buttons on the device. 

“No,” he says, chugging the last of his hot chocolate and setting the cup on the table. “Terran tech isn’t that sophisticated. This was the height of it when I was a kid.” 

“That is...nice,” Gamora says, not wanting to insult him or his home planet, or his favorite possession. That’s more technology than her home planet ever had, anyway. She shoves that thought as far back in her mind as she can. 

“I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing when to stop it for each song,” he says, settling back on the couch, slumping down a little. He lowers the volume on the Walkman, and at her curious look says, “Don’t wanna wake the others, since I don’t have the headphones plugged in. Unless of course you wanna come closer and share ‘em.” He winks. She glares. “Didn’t think so.”

Then he tilts his head back, resting it on the back of the couch. The Walkman sits on his thigh, two of his fingers tapping against it as it plays the still pleasant melody. She’s struck again by the vulnerable position he’s putting himself in, and by the burns she can see better from this close, on his face and climbing down his neck. He truly is so fragile, and yet so trusting of someone so much physically stronger than he is. 

“Do those hurt?” she asks, without thinking about it. It’s a stupid question and she knows it, but it’s somehow easier than continuing to look at him, continuing to let the tension build.

“What?” he asks, shaking himself like he’s been in some kind of trance. He lifts his head a bit, looking for the object of her question and not immediately finding it. “The headphones?”

“What?” she echoes, then realizes the confusion. “No, no. The burns.”

“Oh.” He glances down at his forearms and hands, which are just as burned as the rest of him, palm obscured by a bandage where it held an Infinity Stone just hours ago. “I mean, yeah, but…” He trails off, shrugs for what feels like the dozenth time tonight. “I’ll live. Yours look like they’re basically gone already?”

“My physiology is different from yours,” says Gamora, as if that explains it all. She owes him more than that, though. “Also I have...modifications. Faster healing is one of them.”

His eyes widen a bit at that. “Those actually work? I mean, I’ve seen ads for them on Contraxia and stuff, but I always thought that was just a scam.”

“Most of them are,” says Gamora, regretting the fact that she’s brought this up a bit. It’s a strangely personal thing to be discussing, though it’s not like she thinks he’s going to try to sabotage her mods or anything like that. “But mine were created by Thanos. He is a master of...developing his tools.”

Peter makes a face, like he’s angry, but not at her. “And he considers your body mods one of them, I guess.” 

“And me,” she says quietly, matter-of-factly. 

“You are not a tool,” he says firmly. Also matter-of-factly. “Or a weapon, or whatever he tried to make you.”

She can’t help but scoff bitterly. “Then what am I?” Even though her goal this entire time had been to get away from Thanos, to be something other than what he turned her into, she has trouble believing she could be anything else. She’s just too far gone. 

Peter looks at her very seriously, more serious than she’s used to seeing him. “A Guardian, of course.” 

That sounds nice, she’s got to admit. She meets his gaze, wanting dearly to believe him, but the doubts are too strong, too pervasive. So she tears her eyes away, using her hot chocolate as an excuse as she takes another, longer sip. “This is a good song,” she says after a moment, forcing steadiness into her voice. 

Peter, mercifully, accepts the change of subject. “Yeah,” he says, leaning back against the couch again and closing his eyes. “It is.”

Gamora doesn’t say anything further. He needs his rest, and she suspects he’ll fall asleep soon, judging by how tired he seems. So she decides to lean back too, clutching her hot chocolate and letting herself listen to the music. She might as well enjoy these good things for the next few minutes before she has to leave. 

She lets her eyes slip closed, finding herself smiling at the sound of Peter humming along to the music, very softly and out of tune. She wonders if he even knows he’s doing it. 

Her eyes don’t open again until hours later, when the sounds and smells of Drax in the kitchen wake her with a jolt. She’s in the same position as last night, only now there’s a blanket over her, and her cup’s been moved to the table next to Peter’s empty one. He’s in the kitchen too, trying to get Drax to be quiet, but his shushing is just as loud as Drax is so it’s not really helpful. 

Despite being furious at herself for falling asleep before she could leave, she lets herself smile just slightly. One more day couldn’t hurt.


	2. Chapter 2

The hotel has a pool. 

Gamora knows this because Peter has said it at least a dozen times, with unmistakable excitement. 

It’s not that she doesn’t understand why the opportunity to go swimming would appeal to him. Living in space, water is a luxury -- usually recycled, usually in supply only for what is really necessary. Bathtubs and swimming pools typically exist only on actual planets, and she gets the distinct impression that he and the Ravagers didn’t typically spend much time on worlds with entertainment that doesn’t feature sex bots. Not that she has either, but she’s also never given it any thought as a thing that might be appealing. In fact, swimming has always seemed foolish to her from a tactical point of view -- entirely too easy to be drowned by someone who’s managed to catch you unaware.

So she’d told the others that she wasn’t going to swim when Peter had suggested it, then insisted when he’d had bathing suits delivered for all of them from the hotel’s guest service desk. Now she’s back in her room alone with the bathing suit on that damned bed, trying to tell herself that this is the perfect opportunity to leave.

The others are all gone and distracted. She wouldn’t even have to sneak. She could even leave a note for them, letting them know she left voluntarily so they won’t worry. Peter at least would worry otherwise… He’d probably worry either way, actually. 

She has no supplies or possessions, aside from the too-comfortable, too-silk set of Nova Corps pajamas she refuses to wear anyway. She doesn’t have anything to pack. All she needs to do is walk out the door. But she finds herself unwilling to. 

The desire to leave, the conviction and panic she’d felt so strongly last night, has abated in the light of day. Perhaps the hot chocolate last night had something to do with it, as well. She got away from Thanos for a reason; she is not his tool anymore. She worked so hard, and it would all be for nothing if she went back now. Even if he does need her…

_No_. She shakes her head, picks up the bathing suit. One more day, she tells herself. She may not go back but she’ll go somewhere; she’s nothing but danger to these people. She’s kidding herself if she thinks she can really change that much, live a life that includes others who are not her constant rivals or enemies. 

But perhaps she can live one more day.

Before she can change her mind, she quickly changes into the bathing suit. It’s a one piece, black and plain except for the Nova Corps symbol emblazoned on the chest. As soon as she’s got it on, the fit adjusts to her body. It’s modest as far as bathing suits on this planet go, she’s pretty sure, but it’s still skin tight. She wonders briefly what Peter will think when he sees her in it and forcefully banishes that thought from her head because _she doesn’t care_. 

Still, she is not going to walk through the hotel looking so soft, so exposed. So instead she pulls on the robe that’s hanging in the closet -- also black and monogrammed, not quite silky, which is a relief. It’s not exactly armor, but at least it doesn’t feel like lingerie. 

She half expects to be stopped as she makes her way through the halls of the hotel, expects to run into someone who still knows she deserves to be punished for her past crimes. Who doesn’t care that she helped defeat Ronan. Who speaks with the voice she’s still constantly hearing in the back of her mind. 

Nobody does, though. Nobody even acknowledges her aside from a couple of hotel attendants who smile and nod politely at her. 

Arriving at the pool, it becomes immediately apparent that the hotel personnel have closed it off for their private use, which is also a selfish kind of relief. Otherwise she knows she would have been worrying about intruders the whole time, anticipating confrontation the same way she did in the hall.

She feels another stab of fear as she approaches the gated off entrance, where two of said personnel are standing guard. But they must recognize her, because once she gets close, they each open one side of the gate for her to pass. 

She’s about to thank them when one of them beats her to the punch and thanks _her_ instead, presumably for helping stop Ronan, judging by his wide, grateful smile. She feels such a potent mix of pleasure and embarrassment at that that all she can do is muster a smile and an awkward wave as she walks past. 

The pool is huge. So large that she feels guilty for keeping it all to themselves, though not guilty enough to want others there. There’s a waterslide on one end, currently occupying Drax’s attention. There’s also a waterfall, a diving board, what seems to be a bar at the other end, and another, much smaller pool off to the side. It looks more like a very large bathtub, really. 

“Gamora!” Peter calls excitedly, face lighting up when he spots her. He’s the only one currently in the water, and he swims up to the edge where she’s walking. “Check this out, Gamora! We get the whole pool to ourselves!” 

“I see that,” she says, keeping her eyes very determinedly on his. She’s not going to look down at his chest. She doesn’t even want to. “Is that--very nice?”

He waves his hand dismissively. Her eyes stray to his arm just briefly. “The people said no one really comes down here til the afternoon anyway. ‘Sides, you know Xandarians think this weather is cold.” 

“Xandarians should try space,” says Gamora, meaning Sanctuary but thinking unexpectedly of _actual_ open space, of how she’d been utterly certain of her own death until Peter had made his truly idiotic gamble to save her. She shivers a bit despite herself, crossing her arms to hide it.

“Pool’s heated!” he says brightly, though it’s not quite clear whether he’s picked up on her discomfort or is just continuing his earlier train of thought. 

“I am not worried about the temperature,” she says, which was true up until about thirty seconds ago. She shoves those memories back to the most distant corner of her mind she can locate. She’s good at putting things in boxes like that. She’s pretty sure it’s what’s kept her alive this long.

“Then what are you worried about?” he asks, still maddeningly perceptive. He rests his forearms on the side of the pool, which makes the muscles further up flex a bit as he looks up at her, all earnest concern. There’s a bandage wrapped around one of his arms, and some smaller cuts and scrapes still healing uncovered. “Wait, do you know how to swim?”

“Of course I do,” she says dismissively. “You think Thanos would spend years training his assets just to have us drown?”

“I guess not,” Peter says, rubbing the back of his neck a bit sheepishly. “Well, do you _like_ swimming?” 

She shrugs, unsure how to answer that. “Whenever I went swimming in the past, it was never for pleasure, only necessity.” Like just about everything she’s done, she thinks. There are so many things she doesn’t know whether she likes or dislikes because she was never given the luxury of doing anything just for the sake of doing it. 

“Now is the perfect time to try it then!” Peter says enthusiastically. “Come in, it’s fun!” 

Apparently feeling it’s necessary to demonstrate, he keeps his arms on the edge of the pool and stretches the rest of his body out behind him so he’s floating, then kicks his feet back and forth, apparently just for the sake of splashing water around. 

“Hey!” Rocket yells from where he’s sitting on a chair near them. He’s got Groot’s pot clutched close to him protectively, angling it away from the water. “Watch it!” 

Peter, who would normally respond sarcastically to one of Rocket’s demands, instead winces and lets his body sink back into the water. “My bad!” 

They’ve all been a bit tentative around Rocket as far as Groot is concerned. Gamora feels a pang as she looks at that pot, and the motionless twig stuck in some dirt inside it. It hasn’t grown or shown any signs of regenerating as Rocket says it will, but it does seem to bring him comfort at least, so she’s not about to say anything. 

An awkward silence falls then, a painful reminder that they are all still getting to know one another, and that none of them are particularly good at interactions that aren’t absolutely necessary for everyone’s survival. She has a sudden memory of Drax’s hands around her throat, of Rocket pointing a gun in the middle of the bar on Knowhere. She wonders whether it’s crazy to think they have any chance at all at a life together as a team. As friends. There are so many odds stacked against them, and yet...suddenly she vehemently wants to prove those odds wrong. 

Forcing herself into motion before she can think about it and change her mind, Gamora unties the robe, shrugs out of it, and tosses it onto the nearest lounge chair. 

Peter is staring at her when she turns back. Actually, staring is an understatement. He’s gaping like a fish, making the same dumbfounded expression he did outside of the Broker’s shop. The same expression that had made her happy to kick him in the groin then. Now she feels something else entirely, though she can’t quite articulate what it is. Pride, definitely, but that’s not all. 

Before she can analyze it any further, she takes a deep breath and slips into the water.

It’s cool but not cold the way most of the water she’s ever had to swim in has been. It’s refreshing, strangely calming; perhaps something about the way it slows her descent until she’s floating still, suspended, her legs curled to avoid touching the bottom. She enjoys it so much she finds herself not wanting to return to the surface. 

She does, though. She stays submerged for a few seconds, then forces herself to kick off from the bottom.

Her eyes open as soon as her head emerges, and she finds that Peter’s managed to close his mouth in the time she was under. He’s still staring, though, eyes fixed determinedly on her face with so much effort she’s afraid he’s going to strain something. It’s amusing and strangely gratifying, in the same way as before. 

“So--swimming, huh?” he says awkwardly. His eyes dart to her hair, floating on the water around her, and she follows his gaze. The water has completely straightened it out of course, but she likes the way it looks in the water, the way she can only see the color when the light hits it. 

“Swimming,” she echoes. She looks around, but isn’t sure what she’s supposed to do next aside from treading water. Drax is laughing, going down the slide for probably the dozenth time since she’s come out here. “What now?” 

“You--I dunno, you swim!” Peter says, as if it’s self-explanatory. He swims along on his back for just a couple of strokes. “You can play around, do flips and stuff!” He ducks underwater and curls into a ball, flipping twice before coming back up laughing. “Whoa, dizzy.” 

“If it makes you dizzy, why do you do it?” she asks, slightly concerned. 

He shrugs. “It’s fun. And it looks cool.”

“Do you frequently engage in activities that harm you for fun?” asks Gamora, studying him. She doesn’t think Peter is intentionally self-destructive, but he definitely is reckless. She saw that herself when he’d given her his mask despite his inferior respiratory capacity. Despite the certainty of death. If just doing a somersault underwater is enough to make him dizzy, she’s going to have to seriously reconsider how dangerous the world is for him.

Peter blinks, clearly not following her mental acrobatics. “What? No! It’s not--I’m not hurt or anything, just kinda got a head rush for a second there. ‘S gone now!”

“A what rush?” she asks, trying to examine his balance to determine whether he’s telling the truth about it being gone. It’s difficult to tell in the water.

“A head rush!” he repeats. “You know, like, you turn upside down and all the blood goes into your head?” He pauses, scratches his hair. “Or maybe it’s out of your head, I dunno. The blood goes somewhere and then you get dizzy!”

“That doesn’t sound like fun,” she says. She finally decides that he is all right, though. He’s able to maintain his head above water, and his arms and legs -- which she’s only looking at in order to analyze his immediate health -- are moving normally. 

“It is!” he insists. “You should try it!” 

She gives him a skeptical look; now that she’s determined he’s physically okay, she needs to figure out whether he’s got some kind of angle with this. Her first thought is that he wants to make her dizzy in order to weaken her, but she shakes that idea out of her head. Peter has shown no signs of wanting to hurt her -- not since she’d first tried to steal the orb, anyway -- and she’s got no reason not to trust him. It’s a difficult instinct to suppress, though. 

“Hey, or not,” he says after she stays silent. “There’s lots of other stuff to do. We could go jump off the diving board, or use the slide!” He gestures back towards those objects; Drax has finally stopped repeatedly using the slide, and is now lying on his back on the diving board, which she gathers is not its intended purpose. 

“Or we could do what I used to do when I was a kid,” Peter continues before she can respond, not that she had any idea what to say. “Throw toys to the bottom and try to find them with my eyes closed! Well--I did that the one time. It’s not like we had a pool. Me and my mom used to go swimming in lakes though, or public pools, and one time a hotel we stayed at had a pool! Wasn’t as nice as this one, though.” 

“Do they have many bodies of water on Terra?” asks Gamora, thinking that it sounds that way from his description of his childhood experiences, but she doesn’t actually know. Her knowledge of the planet is limited the city called New York -- though she has never known what was _new_ about it -- and Thanos’s invasion in pursuit of the Tesseract. That city had no lakes that she can remember, and pools certainly hadn’t seemed common either. But perhaps it is not representative of the planet as a whole.

“Yeah!” he says immediately. “Lots! Most places have at least a public pool, or a hotel with a pool, but some rich people who live in warm places have one right in their backyard! There’s also lakes, and ponds, and the ocean! We went there one time too, as part of the trip when we went to Disney World.”

Gamora blinks, feeling vaguely dizzy, caught between trying to follow his rapid-fire answer and swallowing down the odd guilt over the fact that she was even peripherally involved in an attack on his homeworld. An attack he doesn’t know about. She wonders whether he would be so inclined to trust her if he knew about that. “You did what? Where?”

“Went to Disney World!” he repeats, as if that’s going to make any sense to her hearing it a second time. “It’s a really big amusement park, you know with rides, and games, and shows, and there’s a castle where Mickey Mouse lives.”

“Who?” Gamora asks, trying not to get frustrated with how little of this anecdote she understands. 

“He’s a mouse,” Peter explains, slowing the speed of his words a little. “That’s a Terran animal. But he’s not a real one. He’s a big, fake, animated one.”

She nods, though she’s struggling to picture any of this. “And you went swimming there?”

“No,” he says. He suddenly lifts his lower body so he’s floating along the water on his back. She forces herself to look at his face and only his face. “There was a beach a while away from there that we went to. It was in the same state as Disney, Florida. It’s full of beaches.” 

Gamora’s really not sure why he’s telling her this. But she’s felt that way about a lot of the things he’s told her, and she’s figured out that it’s usually because the thing is important to him in some way, and for some reason he wants to share it with her. So, though it’s a strange story she doesn’t understand, she says, “That is very nice.”

“It was.” Peter smiles, but he looks sad again. She doesn’t like that. 

“Did you do anything else in the water?” she asks. 

“Yeah!” he says immediately. “One time while I was still with the Ravagers, I met this Krylorian girl and we--”

“No!” Gamora interrupts, suddenly determined that she is _not_ about to hear the rest of that sentence. She can picture it, though. Currently _is_ picturing it, and somehow it both disgusts and infuriates her to imagine him in a pool like this one, making out with some empty-headed waif he’s managed to seduce. Not that she cares who he seduces. She _does not care_ except, maybe to feel sorry for the women. 

Peter blinks at her, surprised by the force of her reaction. “No?”

She clears her throat. “That is not what I meant. I was referring to other things _we_ might do in the water.”

She realizes her mistake as soon as the words are out of her mouth, as soon as she sees the uncertainty in his eyes turn into a mischievous glint.

“Wellll…” he drawls.

“ _Peter_ ,” she says firmly, heading him off. She can feel her cheeks flush and she curls her hands into fists, trying to suppress that unreasonable reaction. 

“All right, all right,” he laughs, raising his hands in surrender. “Just thought I’d throw it out there. But hey, there’s lots of other stuff we can do. Like… There’s this game called Marco Polo, where we close our eyes and say the words Marco and Polo until we find each other.”

Gamora narrows her eyes, trying to determine whether he’s telling the truth or this is something he’s just invented as another way to hit on her. “That sounds pointless. And like it would be over very quickly.”

“Yeah, it does,” he says, sounding thoughtful. “I remember it being difficult when I was a kid…” He trails off and shrugs. “So maybe not that. If we find a beach ball we can play catch!”

She doesn’t know what a beach ball is, but Peter glances around the area and seems to determine that there isn’t one, because he moves on quickly. “We could swim laps. Or do handstands. Or have a splash fight!” 

“What is--”

Gamora’s question is cut off when Peter suddenly cuts his hand through the water, sending a wave at her that takes her so by surprise that she doesn’t duck in time. It’s not a big splash, so she only gets a few drops of water on her cheeks, but the fact that he’s managed to do it at all leaves her gaping at him in shock. 

Peter is not afraid of her. That much has been clear from the beginning. He wasn’t afraid of her when she was trying to kill him, not even when she’d been about to stab him through the eye socket. He wasn’t afraid of her once he’d learned who she was, either, even though he should have been. But even knowing that, even with all of the other reminders, she _cannot believe_ that he’s dared to splash her. Right here, right in her face. Like she isn’t the most dangerous woman in the galaxy. Like she hasn’t murdered men for much less.

“What are you doing?” she asks finally, stupidly, because she just can’t think of anything else to say. 

“Teaching you to have a splash fight!” says Peter, clearly not having realized what he’s done. He splashes her again, showing no mercy this time and leaving her sputtering. “You splash someone, like that! And then you--” He ducks under the water abruptly, swimming away surprisingly fast.

Well, she can’t let him get away with that. 

Gamora takes off after him before she’s consciously considered what she’s doing, ignoring Rocket’s yell of, “Watch where you’re splashing, you morons!” 

Her only focus is dousing Peter Quill without mercy. 

Peter’s a fast swimmer, but she’s faster. By the time he’s rising out of the water in the middle of the pool, she’s already in front of him, ready. Waiting. But to her surprise, his head isn’t the first thing that pops out of the water; it’s his hands. She realizes what’s about to happen a split second too late: he sends another wave at her, without much power but still enough to hit her face again, surprising her before she can duck. 

“Ha!” Peter laughs loudly when his head does emerge. “Three in a-- _ah!_ ” 

She cuts him off, pulling her arms back and sending a ruthless wave at him. He’s already drenched, of course, but she takes immense satisfaction in watching the water hit his face, though he continues laughing through it. And to her surprise, she’s laughing too. 

“ _Ha!_ ” she says pointedly, before following his instructions and slipping underwater before he can retaliate. 

She swims across the pool as fast as she can again, knowing that he’s behind her, following her, doing his best to catch up. But he isn’t going to because she’s smaller, faster, stronger -- she can slip through the water effortlessly. She makes her way to the other end of the pool, almost to the wall before she stands up, taking a deep breath and tossing her wet hair back. Then she turns around, prepared to find him approaching, to cut her hands into the water -- and sees nothing. He isn’t there, as far as she can see. She frowns, squints, and then his voice comes from behind her.

“Hey!” Peter calls. “Hey, Gamora! Over here!”

She whirls again, sees him standing on the side of the pool behind her. He’s still soaking wet, dripping water, and she is _not_ going to look at the way little rivulets of it are running along the curves of his abs, or the way his swimsuit has tugged its way down an inch or two, exposing his hip bones. She _is not_.

“Hi!” he says brightly, doing a little wave. Then he takes a few quick steps and belly flops into the pool, the impact splashing her again. That cannot be good for the multiple abrasions healing on his stomach and chest. 

She gapes at him again as she watches him sink fully into the water. He rolls over once he’s fully submerged, holding his stomach, possibly in pain. He appears to be laughing, though, just with his mouth closed. 

Not wanting him to be able to splash her when he comes back up, she ducks under the water too, keeping her eyes open and firmly on him this time so he can’t escape. 

Peter opens his too after a second. He blinks a few times, apparently needing an adjustment period before he can see because he looks surprised when he spots her a couple feet away from him. He grins and waves. Gamora, a bit bemused, waves back. She has no idea how competitions like this normally go, but she supposes this one allows for friendliness. 

Peter appears to be in no hurry to get back to the actual fight. He moves his arms back then forward like he’s trying to splash her, despite the fact that he must know that won’t work. Then he just silently laughs some more. 

She shakes her head, deciding she’s just going to watch him and wait him out, let him return to the surface first. She doesn’t know how long Terrans can hold their breath, but knows it’s significantly less time than she can. 

Suddenly she has a flash of seeing Peter through his mask, his own face bare in the open emptiness of space and quickly beginning to change color. 

Her expression must change because Peter frowns and tilts his head as if asking her a silent question. She quickly fixes her face into a small smile, and thankfully Peter’s need for air takes over and he propels himself back to the surface. 

He’s breathing a bit hard when Gamora surfaces, but he doesn’t look distressed. And it’s nothing like the desperate, gasping breaths he’d taken on the Ravagers’ ship, after being in space. She takes a breath of her own and tries to banish the memories, to tell herself that she doesn’t care if he’s been an idiot on her behalf. What does she care if he puts his life on the line for her? It’s not as though she’s asked for it. Not as though she would _ever_ ask for it.

“What?” asks Peter, apparently seeing something of that in her face anyway. Or maybe he’s just remembering what he saw under the water. Either way, it feels strangely vulnerable and she doesn’t like it.

“Nothing,” she says quickly. She already owes him her life. She is not about to remind him of that fact, to let him know that she’s getting sentimental about his stupid sacrifices.

“ _What_?” he repeats, taking a step closer, leaning in.

“ _Nothing,_ ” she insists, echoing his tone. Then she splashes him in the face.

“Hey!” he sputters, laughing and wiping his face with his hands. “No fair!” 

“Oh, was it fair when you snuck out of the water and jumped in next to me?” she asks, keeping her hands at the ready.

“Definitely not,” he says easily. Then he winks at her. “You’re learning fast.” 

She splashes him again and he looks absolutely delighted. “Is that how it’s gonna be?” 

“Yes,” she says. Then she splashes him one more time. Just as she’s preparing to duck under the water to avoid his relataliation, a yell from behind her distracts them both. 

“Aaahh!” Drax yells -- well, half yells, half cackles -- as he runs toward them. He must have abandoned the diving board at some point because he’s coming from the opposite side. “Rocket says you are both idiots!” he declares, right before jumping off the edge of the pool next to them. He curls himself into a ball and lands in the water with such a big splash that the wave it creates spills over the side. 

Gamora and Peter exchange a look; she is somewhere between surprised and amused. Peter’s just giggling. 

Drax comes up fists first, held over his head in a triumphant gesture. “Ha! I have made the biggest splash! I’m going to try that from the diving board!” Then he promptly swims away, splashing them with his feet again as he goes. Gamora’s not sure if that one was intentional or not. 

“That doesn’t count,” Gamora says as soon as he’s gone. “I still won.”

“Oh yeah?” Peter says, smirking. “How do you figure that?”

“Because I got the last splash before that,” she says, arms crossed, daring him to contradict her. “And he wasn’t in the competition, so he doesn’t count.” 

“It’s not a competition, Gamora,” Peter says. “It’s a game.” 

“Which is a competition,” she insists, not about to let him get away with that, “which I have won.”

He runs a hand through his hair, scratching the back of his head again. Probably because he’s uncomfortable about losing. “Not everything is about winning or losing. Splash fights are just about having fun.”

“I don’t do anything just for fun,” she says immediately. Which is true, or at least it’s been true for the majority of her life. It isn’t that Thanos doesn’t play games. He most certainly does, and he makes his children play them as well, all the time. They just aren’t the sort of games that are _fun_ , or even about winning so much as survival. Lose one of his games, and you can expect to die or wish that you could.

“Well,” says Peter, “news flash: You just did!”

“No,” she insists, “I bested you in--” She breaks off, suddenly intensely aware that she was about to say ‘water combat,’ which just sounds comically absurd. “I won.” He is right, though, she realizes. She _did_ have fun, which she is now finding unnerving. This is what makes Peter Quill dangerous to his adversaries. He has a way of getting under your skin, changing you before you’ve even realized it.

“Having fun isn’t a bad thing, you know,” he says casually. They’re near the side of the pool, so he leans back against it, his arms stretched out along the edge. His muscles bulge annoyingly. “The galaxy is such a suck fest most of the time. You gotta have fun whenever you can.” 

“And you do that by having splash fights?” she asks. She remains treading water in front of him, finds that it’s a nice bit of exercise while still being relaxing. It’s a strange combination that she’s quickly growing fond of. Too fond. She’s leaving soon. She shouldn’t be growing fond of things she won’t be able to keep. 

“Mostly by dancing or listening to music,” he says. “I haven’t actually had a splash fight in a long time. And I haven’t been in a pool this fancy...ever.” 

“Neither have I,” she says, though she’s fairly certain that’s obvious. Still, it seems that he’s once again sharing something and she doesn’t want him to be alone in that. 

“Well there’s tons of ways to have fun in this pool,” he says, adjusting his arms so he can pull himself out of the water. She does _not_ watch the way they flex as he does so, or the way the water runs down his chest. She also pays no attention to his thighs when he sits on the edge, his legs dangling in the water. “Lemme show you some more?”

“I don’t know,” says Gamora, still feeling flustered, confused in a way that seems dangerous. She liked having fun with him. She wants to have more of it. But she can’t, because that’s not who she is. That’s not what her life is, or ever could be. So what choice does she have but to reject it? Anything else will make it harder to leave, will make her want things she can’t have. “What are you going to do, dance in the water?”

“Oh, good idea!” Peter says enthusiastically. He slips back into the water and starts bobbing his head and gyrating his hips a bit, grooving to a tune that apparently only he can hear.

She sighs. “I am not going to do that.”

He shakes his head, pouting theatrically. Then he shrugs. “The water did kinda make it look less cool.”

“What else do you suggest?” she asks.

“Well,” he says, “there’s the slide. Or the diving board. I bet you could do a kick ass dive!”

“I could,” Gamora says confidently. She isn’t particularly enthusiastic about that idea at the moment, though.

Sensing that, he glances around again, then grins. “Oh! Or we could go in the Jacuzzi!”

“The what?” she asks, thinking there might have been a translator issue, or he’s using some kind of Terran slang, because that word is utterly unfamiliar to her. 

“Jacuzzi!” he repeats. He points over his shoulder to the small pool next to this one she’d seen before. “You don’t know what a Jacuzzi is?”

“Clearly not,” she says, a little irritated. She doesn’t like not knowing what things mean, things that are so common it’s clearly expected of her to know them. It just reinforces the fact that she doesn’t belong here, could never truly fit in with him. 

He doesn’t seem bothered, though. “It’s that thing!” He points to the small pool--Jacuzzi, apparently--again. “It’s a little baby pool where the water is hot. Not like burning hot, but hot in a nice way. And there’s jets that massage your back, and seats, and some of the really fancy ones have bubbles and colorful lights.” 

“Oh,” Gamora says. She doesn’t know what else to say because that sounds...very tempting. She’s surrounded by cool, refreshing water now, and suddenly she’s curious to find out how hot water would feel. 

“Sounds awesome, right?” Peter says eagerly. “Let’s go!”

Her first instinct is to deny herself, because that’s what’s gotten her this far alive. But she can also see that Peter won’t accept it if she just says no, will want to know why, and that isn’t a part of herself she’s ready to share yet. 

_Yet?_ She catches herself in that thought and revises: Ever. 

And if she isn’t going to explain herself, her choices are to either go along with the suggestion or hurt him. She knows without any significant amount of thought that she isn’t going to hurt him either.

“All right,” says Gamora, and tries to ignore the flip her stomach does when his grin widens.

“Awesome!” He offers her his palm for another high five, and this time at least she knows what he wants.

She rolls her eyes, but slaps his palm lightly, swallowing down her reaction when his smile gets so wide that it looks like it might break his face.

“Come on!”

He practically runs toward the Jacuzzi, blatantly ignoring the rules posted by the side of the pool, and also nearly tripping over his own feet as he glances back over his shoulder to make sure that she’s still following him. 

“I’m coming,” she tells him unnecessarily, as she follows at a more reasonable pace. She has no worries about her own ability to remain coordinated on the slippery ground, but she does not want to appear that eager. Though a part of her that she can’t seem to silence does find Peter’s enthusiasm...cute. She is fairly certain that she has never considered anything cute before in her life.

“It’s more fun if you run!” Peter says. 

“I didn’t realize the fun was supposed to start before you even get in the thing,” she says dryly. It’s pointless now, anyway. It was about a ten second journey, and now they’re standing on the edge of what the sign calls a _hot tub_ , not a Jacuzzi. She points this out to him. 

“It’s the same thing,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. Then he changes the gesture, holding his arms out like he’s presenting the Jacuzzi to her. “After you!” 

She gives him a suspicious look. The water is bubbling, which she supposes is due to those jets he was talking about. She can see through the water to the seats underneath, of various shapes and sizes. Some of these also have jets coming out of them. It’s enticing to her for reasons she can’t fully identify, but she also can’t shake her innate suspicion of anything that looks like it might actually be good. 

“After _you_ ,” she counters. 

He shrugs easily. “If you insist.” Then he climbs in, submerged up to his chest when his feet hit the bottom. He slides into one of the seats and erupts in giggles. “The jets are awesome.” 

Gamora narrows her eyes. “Then why are you laughing?” She still can't quite get past the sense that he might play some sort of joke on her, might take advantage of the knowledge that she's never done anything like this before. So far he's been nothing but kind and understanding, if foolish, but...It will take more than a couple days of that to undo a lifetime of fighting for survival. 

“It tickles!” says Peter, still giggling, though it's diminished enough for him to speak. “On my ass!”

That answer is so ridiculous, so _Peter_ that it absolutely has to be genuine. She stifles a laugh of her own by clearing her throat and rolling her eyes again, filing away the information that he's ticklish for later. 

“Fine,” says Gamora, and finally slips into the water too, steeling herself for an onslaught of tickling, determined not to break as he did. 

What she feels instead is warmth, simultaneously gentle and strong, enveloping her body in a way that she's never felt before. She has the sudden awareness that her body's been tense, aching, both from the previous day's battle and from the ever-present struggle between her natural biology and the things Thanos has done to it. All of that seems to have drained away, though, or perhaps washed away in the water, so that she only becomes aware of it in its absence. She thinks, unbidden, of taking a bath as a very small child, her mother's hands against her skin in a tub she's forgotten until now. And then she becomes aware again that Peter is staring at her. 

His gaze is decidedly soft, as is the little quirk in his lips; it’s also entirely too knowing for her, like he can see without her even saying anything how much she likes it. 

“It’s--warm,” she says, looking at the water to avoid his gaze. The jets are disturbing the water and causing her hair to billow out and move around as if of its own accord. 

“Some might even say hot,” Peter says. “Go on, sit down! The best thing to do is to try out every single seat for a little while, then go back to the one you liked the most.” To demonstrate, he slides one seat over, this one higher because now his shoulders are out of the water. “Oh, this one has jets at the lower back! And the legs!” He lets out a little groan as he sinks back, closing his eyes in apparent pleasure. 

Gamora gets distracted by that noise, but as soon as his eyes open again she shakes herself and sits down in the seat opposite him. This one is low, a dip in the bench that brings the water up to mid-neck. There are jets on the side of the dip that massage her hips, but she hardly notices because there’s also a line of them right along her back, pulsing in a way that’s massage-like. She has to bite down hard on her lip to keep from groaning like Peter had.

“Awesome, right?” he says, watching her. 

She opens her mouth to deny it on instinct, but what comes out instead is a resounding, “ _Yes_.” 

He’s silent for another long moment, watching her in a way that feels simultaneously comforting and incredibly vulnerable. He knows exactly what she’s feeling, somehow. She doesn’t know _how_ he knows, how he could possibly know, but somehow she’s certain that he does, and also that she is surprisingly all right with it. She trusts him, she thinks, not for the first time.

“Like it on your back?” asks Peter. He switches seats again, so that now he has to turn sideways to face her, only one open spot between them.

“Yes,” she says again, because somewhere in her gut she can tell there’s no point in lying. And because, if she’s really honest with herself, there’s a part of her that wants him to know. He’s the one who’s introduced her to it, after all, and...sometimes it’s nice to share things, as dangerous as her instincts say that is.

“Me too,” he says easily, stretching and then shimmying a bit with his arms out, as though he’s scratching his back against the jets in his seat. “‘Specially after yesterday. I dunno about you, but dance offs always make me a bit sore.”

“I do not know about dance offs,” she says automatically. “But the battle did take a toll.” She hesitates for just another second before adding, “And my cybernetic spine does as well.” 

Peter’s eyes widen with apparent surprise. “You have a cybernetic spine?” 

“Yes,” Gamora says defensively, instantly regretting that she shared that. “It’s one of my enhancements.” He’s looking at her differently; now he’s going to find this disgusting, find _her_ disgusting. She shouldn’t care, of course, but she finds herself caring what he thinks of her anyway. 

“Oh,” he says, the surprise ebbing. “Is that why you can jump so high?”

Well, he hasn’t gotten out of the Jacuzzi, storming away in disgust so far. She supposes that’s a good sign. And that wasn’t the question she was expecting in response; more like _Doesn’t that make you a machine now_ or _Guess Thanos really did make you a tool, huh_. But Peter hardly ever does as she expects, or feels she deserves. 

“That is part of the reason,” she admits. 

“Well, that part is kinda cool,” he says. “Sucks that it hurts, though. Guess you’ll have to get a massage every day now!” 

“What, are we going to come here every day?” she asks. That sounds wonderful, actually; and all the more painful because she knows it’s impossible for her. 

“Sure,” Peter says with a shrug. “Or, you know--” He wiggles his fingers and winks. 

Gamora recoils a bit at that. She is used to males of all races finding her either repulsive or an exotic specimen to be exploited. Perhaps Peter is to be the second category, then. And really, should that be any surprise when he's already tried to kiss her?

“ _No!_ ” she says sharply, glaring at him. “I am not going to let you touch me! I am not your _play thing_!”

Peter looks shocked again, the mischievous smile disappearing in an instant. It's replaced by an expression that it takes her a moment to identify as genuine hurt. He raises both hands, palms up, this time definitely a gesture of surrender and not some nonsensical Terran tradition. “Hey, hey! I'm not gonna do anything you don't want me to do, I promise! I just wanted to help.”

“You can help me by leaving me alone,” she snaps, on full alert now, more instinct and reflex than anything else. 

“Okay, okay,” he says, as if trying to placate her. He puts his hands down slowly, like she’s a wild animal that one wrong move is gonna spook. 

She bristles even more at that and scoots one seat to the side, putting more distance between them. She recognizes, at some level, that she’s being irrational, that Peter is always flirting with her and he never means anything harmful by it, at least not so far. But this also feels safer, in some strange way, to be threatened rather than comfortable with him. 

“I wasn’t like, trying to come onto you or something,” Peter continues. 

She laughs once, humorless and derisive. “You _winked_ at me.” 

“I was being playful!” he says, then sighs. She waits for him to continue, expects some more defensive remarks, perhaps even for him to get angry and storm off or yell. She almost welcomes it; it’ll make it that much easier to leave. 

But instead his voice softens, as does his expression...it’s almost _sad_. “But I don’t...I wasn’t trying to suggest that you’re a play _thing_ or whatever. You know I respect you way more than that, right? You’re my friend.” 

“I am not anyone’s friend,” says Gamora. The words come out automatically, without emotion, though they make her sad as soon as she hears them aloud. It’s true, though, she knows. She is not anyone’s friend, has never been, will never be. Thanos has molded her too much in his image for that.

“Yeah, you are,” he says, apparently still unperturbed. “You know what makes you someone’s friend?”

She arches an eyebrow and crosses her arms. “What?”

“When they say so,” says Peter. “And I say you’re mine.”

His voice is still soft, in that way that makes her realize how very easy it would be for someone to hurt him. She _does not want_ to hurt him, but she will. She can see it now: The disappointment, the betrayal on his face when he finally realizes the horror of her true nature. Or worse, Thanos coming for her, making him collateral. Making him bait. There is no way to _not_ hurt him, she’s suddenly certain. So perhaps the best thing -- the only thing -- to do now is to hurt him a little so that later he won’t be hurt worse.

“Well,” says Gamora, “I do not say the same of you.” Then she forces herself to get up and leave the Jacuzzi, the air suddenly bitingly cold against her skin as she makes her way back into the hotel.


	3. Chapter 3

Gamora’s been in her room for hours. Well over half the day, she’s sure, since it had been fairly early when they’d gone down to the pool. And when she’d stormed away from it. 

She’d come back up to the hotel suite right after with every intention of changing back into her clothes and bolting, but Peter had of course stubbornly followed her back. She’d slammed the door to her room shut in his face, but that hadn’t stopped him from knocking on it incessantly for the first couple minutes, then intermittently the rest of the day after that. 

Yelling at him that she doesn’t want to talk to him wasn’t very effective at stopping him from pleading, but she soon learned that ignoring him works much better. Once the others came back as well, he’d stopped altogether.

She could still hear his voice out in the common area, though, along with the others. She still has no desire to leave while the others are out there, parading herself in front of them in what feels like a shameful flight, though Gamora knows it’s for their own good. So she’d decided to just wait it out in her room until they all went to sleep.

And wait she had. She’s sitting on the edge of her bed now, stiff and unmoving. It’s long since become dark out, and she hasn’t heard their voices for almost an hour. She’s debating whether to wait a little longer just to be safe when her stomach starts to protest its empty state in earnest. 

“Stop that,” she hisses at her stomach as it growls softly. It hasn’t been that long since she’s eaten -- They’d all had breakfast in the room before going to the pool.

She is accustomed to surviving on minimal ration bars provided by Thanos, just enough calories for her body to function optimally. Often she is accustomed to surviving on less when it’s necessary for a mission or for survival. This is not even close to the longest she’s ever gone without food.

And yet, over the past few days, she’s had far more to eat than usual. Good food. Rich food. Indulgent, even, if she’s including the elaborate Xandarian dinner they’d been presented with after the battle, and the hot chocolate, too. It’s taken the blink of an eye for her body to adapt to having more, and now her stomach is trying to demand it.

She puts a hand over it as it growls even louder, an embarrassing noise that she immediately, irrationally fears will wake the others. 

“ _Stop_ ,” she repeats more vehemently, vaguely aware that talking to herself like this is probably worse than the sounds her stomach is making. It doesn’t listen to her, of course, clenching again painfully.

Perhaps running out to the kitchen before she leaves would be okay, she thinks. What could it hurt? She’s going to need to eat at some point anyway, it might as well be now, when her traitorous stomach is demanding it of her. She could even take a hot chocolate for the road. 

Decision made, she makes herself stand up off the bed and -- very quietly, but before she can change her mind -- open the door. She figures she’ll just make a quick dash to the kitchen, grab whatever is easiest, and come right back; then she’s definitely, totally leaving. 

When the door swings open, however, she’s greeted with two sights that stop her in her tracks. 

The first is a plate on the floor right outside her door. It’s got a sandwich on it, as well as a bag of chips and a mug of hot chocolate, though she doubts it’s hot anymore. She’d heard the others talking about sandwiches a couple hours ago, when they’d been having dinner. Peter had knocked on her door again around that time as well, but she’d again ignored him. He must have left this here assuming she’d find it sooner than this. 

The second sight is the man himself. Peter is fast asleep, lying on the couch in the common area, which faces her room. He must not have meant to fall asleep, considering the idiot is still in his damn bathing suit. He’s got a towel haphazardly thrown over him, and his head is resting on his arm. He’s even snoring slightly. 

For a moment all she can do is glare, moving her gaze back and forth between the sandwich and his sleeping form. A large part of her annoyance is at the fact that she wasn't expecting anyone to still be out here. Peter Quill might be insufferable, but there is no way he is more stubborn than she is. 

The sandwich on the plate is hardly less irritating. She'd stormed away from the pool, denied herself the comfort of remaining in the warm water longer, with the intention of putting a safe distance between herself and Peter. She doesn't want him to offer her anything, doesn't want him to care about her in any way, because that is for his own good. That will protect him from becoming collateral damage when Thanos decides it's time for her to pay penance for her betrayal. And yet here he is, still trying to take care of her. Like an idiot.

Her stomach growls again and she curses it silently. Then she scoops up the plate and the mug, quickly taking them back into her room and closing the door. It's the simplest solution, really: she'll eat this and then silently walk out past him. No puttering around in the kitchen to wake him up.

She sits back down on the bed and is about to inspect it--peel apart the bread and every layer inside to check for nefarious contents--when she notices that there’s already a bite taken out of one side. Peter must have remembered her hesitation from last night, wanted to show her this is safe, which is infuriatingly considerate of him. 

She inspects the sandwich anyway, sniffing it just to be safe, but she’s not surprised when she neither sees nor smells anything suspicious. Deciding to just get on with it, she takes a large bite out of the sandwich and sets about eating as quickly as she can. It’s good, which also irritates her; she’s not supposed to be enjoying this. This is supposed to be about getting food in her stomach so she can leave already. Besides, food is a necessity and nothing more. That’s what Thanos always taught her. 

The chips are good too, and the hot chocolate is as well even though it’s cooled to room temperature. She doesn’t allow herself to savor those things either, just chews the chips mechanically and practically chugs the hot chocolate--just regular chocolate now, she supposes. Tepid chocolate.

When she’s finished, she sets the plate and mug on the nightstand, not bothering to return it to the kitchen. She dislikes mess, but it’s not as though she’ll be needing to use this room tomorrow. Or at all, ever again, in fact. She is leaving right now, no more excuses, no more exceptions. _Leaving_ before she brings harm on this kind, oblivious idiot.

Swiping off the light, she leaves the room silently but decisively, walking by Peter without even glancing at him, by the kitchen without stopping to grab another packet of hot chocolate as she had initially considered. She makes it all the way to the door out of the suite before she’s stopped in her tracks by a noise from the couch.

Peter is stirring, though she knows she hasn’t made any noise that would be detectable by his Terran ears. _He_ is making noise, though -- groaning softly in a way that makes her wonder whether he’s having a nightmare of his own before falling silent again. She turns slowly and looks at him, sees that he must have shifted pretty violently, because the towel has fallen onto the floor, leaving his body mostly exposed.

“I am _leaving_ ,” she hisses to herself. What does she care if he gets cold after being stupid enough to fall asleep in his swimsuit?

But just like her traitorous stomach, her legs ignore her as they carry her back across the room to the couch.

Peter’s face isn’t as calm as it was when she’d come out before. His brow is furrowed slightly, worry lines on his forehead. Must be a nightmare, then. Gamora’s had nightmares nearly every night of her life since Thanos took her, but she feels a strangely strong pang of sympathy for Peter having one now; he doesn’t deserve this. He should be able to sleep peacefully. She briefly considers waking him, but if he wakes up he’ll want to talk, and she is not ready for that yet.

No, not _yet_. Ever. Because she’s leaving. Just as soon as she covers Peter back up. There’s no point in letting him get cold during the night. 

She bends down to pick up the towel and arrange it to cover as much of his large frame as possible: his broad shoulders; his arm, which appears even bigger than usual because of the way it’s pressed up against his body; his torso, with bruises and burns still yet to be healed dotting the skin there. 

She shakes herself and drops her hands. His legs--muscular, she can’t help but note--are left mostly exposed, but she’s covered what she can. And now she’s done with her task and she can get going. 

But she doesn’t, for some reason. Her feet are glued to the floor in front of the couch, and she finds she’s unable to stop looking at him. 

His body is attractive, without question. The kind of conventional, masculine, slightly egotistical attractive that she normally finds irritating. But there’s an odd vulnerability, a softness in him too -- In the burns that are still healing, marking his body almost like the lines on a map. In the way he’s been willing to wait for her here, exposed on more levels than one. In the way that he seems to _want_ to know her, and not just the warrior Thanos has made her into. The parts of herself she’s buried so deep they’re nearly forgotten.

And that’s what it comes down to, really: She wants to know him, too. But also the person that he somehow sees in her. 

It’s impossible, she tells herself. She _cannot_ have those things, cannot have a life that is different from the one she was formed into. And yet for a moment she can see it clear as anything: A life where she allows herself to have friends, family. To have food that is good, that she is allowed to savor just for pleasure. A life where she has _him._

The change in her body happens so quickly and at once so subtly that she almost doesn’t recognize it for what it is, almost thinks that somehow the temperature in the room’s gone up several degrees, that the tension and warmth pooling in her abdomen are only the after effects of her late dinner. Almost.

She nearly gasps out loud when she realizes, has to press her lips tight together to keep the sound in. She stands frozen still in front of him, unable to believe what she’s feeling. This can’t be what she thinks it is, _it can’t_. 

Yet even as she stands there in front of Peter, still looking down at him, she can feel the warmth intensify and almost...settle. Like it belongs there. Like now that it’s here it’s never going to go away. 

That thought finally spurs her into action; all intentions of leaving fly from her mind because the only thing she can think of right now is getting away from Peter and back to the relative safety of her room, with at least a closed door between them.

It’s only the years of stealth training that keep her from slamming the door shut in her haste. Instead she closes it quietly then leans back against it, breathing hard as if she’s just run...well, it would take an incredible distance to make her pant this much. But here she is, having run about five feet, breathing like she’s got no control over it. It’s far from the only thing she’s apparently got no control over right now. 

Gamora forces herself to close her eyes and focuses on her breathing. For years she’s prided herself on her ability to control, discipline, regulate her body. Breathing seems like a good place to start, so that’s what she does for a while, counting silently as she lengthens each inhalation and exhalation. She gets that down to a good pace, then focuses on her heart rate. It takes longer to slow that to match her breathing, because she keeps getting flashes of Peter in her mind that send it galloping off again. But she gets where she wants to be with it too, picturing the darkness of Sanctuary, the vastness of space, and the weight of a dagger balanced on her forefinger.

By the time she’s opened her eyes again, she’s managed to calm herself at least physically, all of her senses clear again like she’s ready to go into battle. She feels silly, almost, for her panic and her outburst. Nothing is happening to her, she’s sure. Just a ghost, a figment of an imagination she’s let wander much too far over the past few days.

Then she looks down, pulls up the hem of her shirt, and sees the silver coloring her skin.

“ _Oh, fuck_ ,” she hisses,dropping the shirt like it’s burned her. She so rarely curses -- something she must have picked up from Peter. What has he _done_ to her? 

Nothing, she tells herself; he’s done nothing because this is nothing. She hurries into the bathroom and lifts her shirt again in front of the mirror over the sink, thinking maybe it was just a trick of the light out there that’s fooled her -- 

But no. There it is still, a pool of silver on her abdomen. It’s fairly faint but unmistakable, and it glows bright like a beacon to her. This is something she thought she’d never have, something she _shouldn’t_ have. Yet there it is. Just like with Peter in the living room, she finds herself unable to stop looking at it, her feet stuck to the tile floor of the bathroom. 

It would be one thing if all this meant was attraction; she can handle being attracted to him, she thinks. But she knows the silver means so much more to her people than physical attraction. To become silver for a person signifies something much deeper: an emotional connection. It signifies trust, affection, lo-- 

No. The _potential_ for love, she reminds her reeling brain. 

_A suitable lifemate,_ comes her mother’s voice, from the depths of a nearly-forgotten memory. 

She’d been barely old enough to learn about that sort of thing, but her mother had told her anyway. Perhaps because she’d been the sort of woman who didn’t believe in misleading children. Perhaps because she’d somehow sensed that the end was coming even before Thanos’s ship had torn its way through the sky. 

Either way, Gamora’s buried that conversation deep. Deeper than most of the fragmented memories of her parents. Because what was the point? It isn’t as though she can ever go home, ever rejoin her people. She hardly even considers herself to be one of them anymore. Thanos has made her into...something else. 

And yet there is the silver, unmistakable on her abdomen, for a _Terran._ For _this_ Terran, who has probably never even _considered_ the possibility of a committed relationship in his life. Not that she would ever want one with him. 

_With anyone,_ she amends quickly. She is not that kind of person. She does not have that kind of life.

Still, images pop into her head unbidden and for a moment she gets lost in them. She pictures a life where she does something as simple yet intimate as hold Peter’s hand, where she dances with him like he tried to get her to do on Knowhere; where she lets him close the distance and kiss her; where he makes her hot chocolate and hands it to her with a kiss on the forehead; these images of normal, happy moments, in a life she can never have. 

She’s shaken out of that reverie by the sound of a gentle thud, and she jumps back, ready to defend herself...against the tiny, hotel-provided shampoo bottle that’s fallen to the ground. In her distraction, she must have leaned against the counter and knocked it over. 

She leans down and picks it up with a frustrated noise, squeezing it much harder than necessary in her hand. For a moment, this little bottle is responsible for all of her worries, and in a rare moment of thoughtlessness, she throws it out of the bathroom, relishing in the much louder sound it makes when it crashes into the dresser on the other side of the room and falls back to the floor. 

There’s a little bottle of conditioner, too, and one of body wash. They’re mostly empty from the shower she took while ignoring Peter after leaving the pool. She still isn’t thinking, is running high on adrenaline and anger, the bitterness at the loss of her childhood, her culture, her _future_ as she scoops up the other two bottles and throws them one at a time as well. The crashes that they make are equally satisfying, and she starts looking around for something else to throw when a knock on the door of her room makes her freeze instantly.

“Gamora?” comes Peter’s voice, quiet enough to avoid disturbing the others too much, but urgent all the same. “Gamora, you okay?”

“Idiot,” she mouths at herself in the mirror. Somehow, entirely adrift in her emotions, she’s managed to forget his presence on the other side of the paper thin wall, the way he was already stirring before she’d decided to make a bunch of noise. She can hear his heart pounding from here, realizes she must have been the one to wake him on top of the nightmare he was already having.

She hesitates, wracked with guilt, and fear--fear that he’s going to find out what she just did and decide she’s too violent to be around, or that he’s somehow going to be able to sense the silver and freak out. She stays silent, thinking perhaps she can stick with the ignoring him until he goes away approach that’s been working for her all night. 

But of course it doesn’t. In fact, he sounds even more concerned when he repeats the question a few seconds later. “Seriously, are you okay?” Then, when she still hesitates to answer, he says, “If you don’t answer, I’m gonna assume you’re hurt and I’m coming in.” 

She curses in her head and hurries to the door. Not wanting to risk waking the others any more than she already has with her impromptu bottle-hurling, she stands on the other side of the closed door and says just loud enough for him to hear, “I’m fine,” in a tight voice. 

“What happened?” he persists, apparently not satisfied with that. “Are you hurt?” 

“I’m not hurt,” she says, balling her hands into fists in frustration. 

“Are you sure?” he says, and she bites back an irritated noise. “It sounded like something hit the wall.” 

“I did not hit the wall,” says Gamora, wondering if he honestly thinks that’s what the noise was. Probably not, probably he knows that she must have thrown something, but there’s an odd innocence in his tone. Sincerity. He really is concerned that somehow the small bang noises made by the bottles represent the sort of crisis that might actually have injured her.

“Well no,” says Peter, sounding a bit taken aback now. His heart is still beating far faster than seems warranted for the situation, even if she truly was injured. “I mean, I didn’t think you like...threw your whole body against it. But it sounded like something hit it!”

Gamora frowns, her guilt and panic turning quickly to annoyance. “I did not throw any punches at the wall, if that is what you are insinuating. Why would I do that?”

“Sleepwalking?” he suggests.

She blinks, feeling lost again, wondering for the umpteenth time whether he’s messing with her. It would probably be warranted at this point, really. “What?”

“Sleepwalking?” he repeats. “You know, when you’re asleep but your body gets up and walks around and...I dunno...hits...stuff?”

“Is that something Terrans suffer from?” she asks, concerned. Perhaps that’s why the Milano looked so beat up. 

“No!” he says. “At least, not this one. Not me. But--I don’t know, if you weren’t stabbing the wall, then what happened? I definitely heard something.” 

“Nothing!” she says, quickly growing annoyed again. 

“It didn’t sound like nothing.” 

She groans and finally, out of frustration or maybe just desperation, yanks the door open. Peter nearly stumbles into her, only her hand on his shoulder keeping him from falling forward; he must have been leaning against the door. 

She pushes against his shoulder so he can right himself, noting as she does so that his skin feels warmer than usual. Not terribly warm, but her enhancements raise her own body temperature quite a bit, so he usually feels cool in comparison. His heart is racing still, she can hear it, so the adrenaline coursing through his system must be warming him up. 

She glances up to catch his eye and finds him looking at her curiously. Realizing she’s kept her hand on him far longer than necessary, she rips it away, irritation flaring again. Damn him, she thinks, keeping her eyes determinedly on his face and not his annoyingly bare chest. All of this is his fault. Him and all these things he’s making her feel. She’s never been silver in her life before this, and now she’s known this man for a few days and here it is. 

“Why are you still wearing _that_?” she demands, because it’s the most innocuous thing she can come up with while still giving voice to her overpowering irritation. Somehow, suddenly, all of her confusing, ridiculous emotions are focused on his stupid swimsuit. If he hadn’t been too dramatic to go and put some damn clothes on after the pool, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe she would be out the door and on her way to...where? But it doesn’t matter, because she isn’t.

Peter looks down at himself as though just now realizing what he’s wearing, and actually _blushes._ The color doesn’t just darken his cheeks, she notices, it spreads all the way down his neck to the top of his chest. He seems to notice that too, and notice her noticing, because he crosses his arms, looking surprisingly self-conscious. “I dunno, because I just--didn’t change? I was worried ‘cause I upset you, and I wanted to fix it.”

“This is the opposite of fixing it,” she snaps, raking her eyes over him and making her gaze intentionally cruel, disapproving. 

She wonders if it's at all believable, but then she looks back up at his face and catches the unmistakable hurt there. Maybe she's a more convincing actor than Thanos ever gave her credit for, then. Cold comfort now. 

His face scrunches up in anger, nose wrinkling with it. She had thought him a better liar than she is, but she can still see the hurt underneath his expression, in his eyes. Perhaps she has just gotten better at reading him. She doesn’t know what to make of that. 

She sees his eyes travel behind her, and his eyebrows go up like he’s gotten some sort of answer. She refuses to take her own eyes off him though; _never let yourself be distracted from the target_. 

“Oh, did those bottles attack you?” he sneers. “Or did you attack them?” 

“Is this your new way of _fixing it_?” she says harshly, hands once again balling into fists at her sides. “Demanding explanations for every aspect of my room?”

“Well, what would you suggest?” he asks, tone a poor imitation of casual. “I could follow _your_ method of fixing things: Should I hide away in my room the entire day? Or try to sneak out in the middle of the night?” 

She nearly recoils, so taken aback she momentarily forgets to be angry. Perhaps he _is_ a great actor, if he was faking sleep that entire time… “How--?”

“You think I don’t know what you were doing when you came out of your room tonight?” he asks. 

“I did not come out of my room tonight,” she lies, wondering suddenly if he’s bluffing, trying to confuse her into admitting something that he would otherwise only suspect.

Peter gives her a look that she can’t quite read. Impatience, maybe. Or disappointment. Still hurt and frustrated, too. His voice is firm when he says, “Yes you did.” 

Okay, so probably not bluffing, then. But she’s committed to this now, is not ready to admit that he’s caught her in a lie. _Especially_ not ready to admit that he’s caught her in an attempt to run. “No, I did not.” She crosses her own arms, mirroring his posture. “What makes you think that I did?”

“Uh, that for one,” says Peter, pointing. 

At first she thinks he means the bottles again, because they’re embarrassing, the visual proof of her total loss of self-control. But then she sees where his attention is actually focused: On the plate and mug she’s left on the bedside table, undeniable evidence off the fact that she has, in fact, opened the door of her room at least once since he left the food there.

“Yeah,” says Peter, a note of bitterness in his tone now. “How’d that get there? Such a mystery.”

She has to admit, that’s pretty hard to deny. She struggles for a moment, trying to figure out a way to do it anyway, but finally she has to say, “Fine, so what if I did? I don’t owe you an explanation for every movement I make.” 

He sighs then, slumping slightly to lean against the doorframe. It’s like all the fight’s gone out of him and now he just seems...exhausted. There’s bags under his eyes, she notices. She thinks of last night, how he was out on the couch awake when she came out. She wonders how much sleep he’s actually been able to get the last couple days. 

Then she reminds herself fiercely that she doesn’t care. 

“Cause I thought we were friends,” Peter says with half a shrug. “I thought--we were gonna be a team now. Or whatever. If you’re not happy here, fine, whatever, no one’s forcing you to stay. But you could at least say bye.” 

“I didn’t--” she starts, then hesitates, unsure what to say. This would be a good opportunity, she knows, to just say goodbye and walk out. “I wasn’t…” She trails off, because as much as she doesn’t want to admit Peter is right, suddenly the thought of leaving scares her more than the thought of staying. 

Or maybe it always has. Has she ever actually wanted to leave, or was that Thanos’ voice in her head? Telling her the lies he’s used to keep her prisoner, keep her deluded into something she once thought was contentment, perhaps even pleasure. Making her believe that she is everything with him, nothing without. That she would be powerless to escape his punishment were she ever to defy him. 

She got away from him once, she reminds herself. She will be far more vulnerable on her own than with the others, but the thought of putting them in danger still gnaws at the back of her mind.

“You didn’t what?” asks Peter, still sounding utterly defeated. Somehow his tone, his expression, is even worse than the tear tracks she suddenly remembers seeing on his cheeks the night before. “You didn’t care enough to say goodbye? You were just pretending when you called us your friends before?”

She swallows, warring with herself. Years of instincts are telling her to deny, to run, or to fight...But she is out of Thanos’s clutches now, isn’t she? It’s probably time she acted like it. That, and the defeated way Peter is looking and acting, finally push her to say, “I didn’t want to leave.” 

His eyes widen; he looks surprised, like he didn’t expect her to answer at all, or answer honestly. 

“I _don’t_ want to leave,” she amends, attempting to force a confidence into her voice that she doesn’t quite feel. It’s worth it, her damn traitor of a mind tells her, for the way his expression softens, and his shoulders relax slightly. 

“Hey,” he says gently. “Why don’t we go hang out on the couch or something for a bit? So we can quit just loitering in your doorway.” She hesitates and he adds in a sing-song, “I’ll make you some more hot chocolate.” 

As reluctant as she is to be even closer to him when she’s still half-afraid he’s going to somehow sense the silver that’s _inexplicably_ appeared on her abdomen, she finds herself agreeing. “Okay...I do like the hot chocolate,” she allows herself to admit. 

“How could ya not?” he says charitably, pushing off the doorframe and leading the way into the kitchen. 

Gamora hesitates for only a second longer, then follows him. The muscles in his back are mesmerizing, she thinks, even as she tries not to look at them. They ripple as he moves, giving him the appearance of great strength though she knows his body is comparatively fragile. Perhaps he _is_ strong for a Terran, she thinks. He’s managed to survive in space for this long, after all. And with the Ravagers, who she knows are not exactly a gentle bunch. He would probably be stronger than she is, were it not for her enhancements, she realizes.

Peter stops, having reached the kitchen, and she nearly runs into him, lost in thought. Fortunately her reflexes are faster than his, so she manages to stop just in time.

“You okay?” he asks, glancing over his shoulder, apparently having heard her intake of breath at that.

She tries to arrange her face into a confused expression. “Yes. Why would I not be?”

Peter sighs. “You know nobody here is gonna attack you, right? You don’t have to act tough, like, every single second.”

“I am not _acting_ tough,” she says, crossing her arms. 

“Fine,” he says, sounding a bit exasperated. “You don’t have to _be_ tough every single second. You’re safe here. What do you think is gonna happen if you admit that you’re not completely, totally okay?” 

Gamora is silent for a moment, thinking of the many varied consequences of showing weakness in front of Thanos, or Ronan, or any of her ‘siblings.’ The _best_ case scenario was having to defend herself against an attack. “Nothing good,” she says, “if my past is any indication.”

“Oh,” Peter says, his look softening as he gets two cups out and goes about preparing the hot chocolate. “Okay, yeah, I get it. Like--I could never trust any of the Ravagers, except on jobs and stuff, and sometimes not even then. This one time Retch slipped something into my stew that made me sick for days, just because he thought it was funny to see me throw up. I can’t even look at that kind of stew anymore.” 

Gamora narrows her eyes, a surprisingly strong surge of hatred flowing through her for this Retch person. “Which one is that?” 

“What?” he asks, glancing up from where he’s filling a cup with water. He’s distracted enough that the cup overflows, wetting his hand. He jumps at that, setting the cup on the counter and shaking off his hand. He clears his throat, then runs his damp fingers through his hair, making a few pieces of it stick out. “It’s like--Well on Earth we would’ve called it chili, but I don’t actually know what it’s--It’s got fish and beans and it’s spicy…”

“Not the stew,” says Gamora, her tone coming out more clipped and impatient than she’s intended, because she’s still inexplicably angry at the idea of someone hurting him. She realizes belatedly that _she’s_ probably hurting him by snapping like that when he’s sharing something so vulnerable. She grabs a hand towel from the counter and holds it out toward him like a peace offering. “This--Retch--person.”

“Oh,” says Peter, taking the towel and quickly drying his hands on it. “I don’t think you met him specifically. But he’s bald. Ugly. Likes to play mean jokes. A typical Ravager, basically.” 

She can remember several of them that meet that description, but she had made it a point to interact with as few Ravagers as possible. Aside from the appalling way they treated Peter, she’s not a fan of the way they looked at her either. They also smell pretty gross. 

Still, she vows to find out which one he is if she ever does have to work with them again. She doesn’t say so out loud, because she’s not sure how Peter would feel about her threatening a Ravager, even one he seems to dislike. But he is not going to get away with hurting Peter if she can help it. 

“But my point is,” Peter says, dumping the excess water out of that cup and working on the rest of the hot chocolate, “that you can trust us. Nobody here is gonna hurt you, or take advantage of you or anything just because you’re not a hundred percent okay. Or for any reason. I just wanna help you.” 

She doesn’t respond all the while he’s making the hot chocolate. It’s not until he’s handing her one of the cups that she finally can’t help but ask, “Why?” 

Peter looks taken aback in a way she doesn’t immediately understand. She’s seen the way he can work a deal, play a mark -- turn on all the charm to get his terms in a negotiation. Somehow a part of her has been convinced -- or trying to convince itself, maybe -- that this is no different from his proposal to team up over the Orb. An unlimited supply of hot chocolate for an express ticket into her pants, perhaps. But there’s something unmistakably sincere in the distress she sees on his face now. She might not be very good at reading people, but she doesn’t think she’s wrong about this.

“Why?” he repeats, taking a sip of his own hot chocolate and then wincing. “Oh, that’s -- that’s really hot. You might wanna wait a second before you drink it.”

Gamora looks down into her cup, then defiantly takes a sip of her own, finding the temperature surprisingly pleasant. She meets his eyes again and shrugs. “That was not an answer to my question.”

“I know,” he says quickly, setting his cup down on the counter again and studying her. “I just -- I think you deserve better than what you’ve had. If I can give you some of that, why wouldn’t I? Besides, I like you.”

She bristles instinctively, the words feeling like a trap despite the genuineness she senses from him. “I am _not_ going to sleep with you.”

“Oh my god, Gamora,” Peter says, sounding hurt, and more surprised than she feels is really warranted for somebody who brags so frequently about his sexual escapades. “That is not--Do you assume everyone who offers to help you is just doing it because they wanna sleep with you? Or am I just special?” 

Gamora says nothing, lets her silence speak for her. In truth, very few people have ever offered to help her, and the ones that did have all expected something in return. When he saved her life in the Kyln, she’d assumed he was going to ask for sex for repayment then, too. 

He still seems genuinely distressed by this, though more sad now than hurt. He’s apparently read her silence. “Holy shit, does it happen that much?” 

“I have had plenty of men expect sex from me,” she says flatly. “I’ve killed most of them.” 

“Good,” Peter says, the vehemence in his tone surprising her. “Those assholes deserved it. But… Look, I’ve never had many real friends, but if all the TV shows and movies from Earth are accurate -- which they are -- then friends help each other just because they’re friends, and they like each other.” 

“And...you do?” asks Gamora. The words come automatically, an honest question because the things he’s saying just do not compute. She realizes a moment too late how pathetic that sounds, and tries to cover it by lifting the hot chocolate to her lips again, taking a bigger sip than her first one.

“No, I really _don’t_ have a lot of real friends,” he says, misunderstanding her, probably because her actual question was so stupid. “I mean, there’s Kraglin, I grew up with him, but he’s more like my brother than my friend. And Yondu is...well, Yondu. And there were some girls, but they were just--” He breaks off abruptly, as if somehow hearing her question over again. Then his eyes widen, looking even more distressed than before. “Wait. Are you...asking if I like you?”

“No,” she snaps, aware that her tone doesn’t sound anywhere at all near convincing. She takes another drink from her cup, letting the chocolate comfort and ground her.

“ _Gamora_ ,” he says, sounding pained, but also clearly ignoring her attempt at deflection. “ _Hell yeah_ I like you! You’re, like, the coolest person I’ve ever met!”

She narrows her eyes at him, trying to determine if he’s messing with her. Again, he seems bafflingly sincere. “I’m--what?”

“The coolest,” he says easily. “C’mon, you’re like, a total badass. Plus you’re smart, and brave, and you listened to my Kevin Bacon story and you actually remembered it! And you were the first one to back me up when I said we should fight Ronan. That was very cool of you. I’ve never met anyone who’s gone through as much as you and still come out a good person.” 

If she’d been drinking her hot chocolate at that moment, Gamora’s pretty sure she’d have choked on it. “A...good person?” Perhaps he was being sarcastic, or making some strange Terran reference she doesn’t understand. 

“Of course,” he says, like it’s obvious. “You just saved a whole damn planet! Probably the whole galaxy, actually. That definitely makes you a good person.”

Her hands tighten around her cup, trying to control the shake in them. That is never a label she thought she’d hear applied to her, nor one she ever felt like she’d deserve. She’s not really sure she deserves it now, or ever could considering everything she’s done. 

She opens her mouth to protest, to reflexively tell him that he’s wrong, that if he really thinks she’s _good_ , he might need to get his head checked. Perhaps he’s actually delusional. But then he beats her to it, speaking first.

“What about you?” asks Peter, apparently oblivious to her current inner turmoil, or possibly just ignoring it. “Do you...like me?”

She ought to deny it, ought to tell him that of course she doesn’t, isn’t the sort of person who _likes_ anybody. It’s an infantile word, a foolish concept, Thanos would say. It would make her weak. The last person she can recall _liking_ was Nebula, and...well, it’s not like she needs any sort of reminder about how _that_ turned out.

And yet, looking at Peter’s face, seeing the utter desperate vulnerability there and still feeling the unmistakable flush of silver on her abdomen, she cannot find it in herself to lie.

“Yes,” she whispers, barely audible. “I do. That -- is why I was going to leave.”

“Cause it’s...bad to like people?” he asks, apparently confused, though the happiness that passed over his face hasn’t disappeared. Her abdomen feels a little warmer at that expression. 

“No,” she says quickly. “Well…” She should say _yes_ , she thinks. That’s what Thanos has trained her to believe; as soon as she’s grown too fond of anything, he’s been sure to give her a firsthand demonstration of how it can be lost, usually in the most painful way possible. But that’s only a small part of the reason, if she’s honest with herself. 

“I have many enemies,” she continues at last. “And if they find out that we...are friends--that I like any of you--then they become your enemies as well. I’m afraid I am putting you all in danger by staying.” 

“Hey, we’ve all got enemies!” Peter says, oddly cheery. “I’m pretty sure all the Ravagers are gonna be after me after that stunt I pulled with the orb. And I’ve got a few leftover from my Ravager days, too.” 

She sighs. “My enemies are far worse than the Ravagers or any of your spurned lovers,” she says, and continues over Peter when he seems like he’s going to protest the latter. “And I do not want to make them yours.” 

“Hey,” he says, apparently unperturbed. “One time these two girls I’d hooked up with at different times found me on Contraxia. They’d, like, teamed up I guess, so they came up to me in the bar after I’d already gotten drunk and asked me if I wanted a threesome--”

“Peter,” she tries to interrupt, because he seems to have missed her point entirely, and also because this story is making that peculiar hot rage crawl its way up in her gut again. She does _not_ want to know about his past conquests.

“So obviously I said hell yeah,” he rambles, apparently oblivious to her distress, or deluded enough to somehow think that this is going to help calm her down. “And they took me back to their room, got me naked, and tied me to the--”

“Peter!” she snaps, clapping her free hand over his mouth before either of them has had any chance to think about what she’s doing.

His eyes widen in a way that would be comical if she weren’t stewing so much. It works to shut him up, but now there’s another kind of hot feeling stirring inside her at the feel of his warm breath on her palm. His lips are incredibly soft, much softer than she’d have expected. 

She stares at her own hand for a moment before she finally snaps out of it. She rips her hand away like his lips have burned her and says, “I have no interest in hearing any lewd stories about your sex life.”

“No, no,” he says quickly. “That wasn’t where that was going. They left me there! Naked, tied to the bed! I was stuck there until Kraglin found me in the morning. Gave him blackmail material for like, a year. He still brings it up sometimes, the jerk.” 

“And that is supposed to make me fear your enemies?” she scoffs. “Mine would have skinned you alive if they had you in such a position.” 

“Well, yeesh,” Peter mutters, finally picking up his cup again. “It’s not a competition.” 

“No,” she insists, “it isn’t. That’s my _point._ We don’t have to compete, because my enemies do not have to be yours.”

“And if I want them to?” he asks, taking a big drink of hot chocolate. Some of it gets caught in his mustache, and he licks it off, the flick of his tongue momentarily making her think of some particularly large canid race. It also undercuts the seriousness of his words by more than a little.

She sighs. “Peter. I am trying to spare you. Please believe me when I say that is a greater mercy than I have ever shown anyone else.”

“I do believe you,” says Peter, surprisingly easily. “But just because you think you know what’s best for me, that doesn’t mean it actually _is._ I’m a big boy, Gamora. I can make my own decisions.”

“You were playing catch with an Infinity Stone,” she says condescendingly, though she’s plenty aware that it’s an unfair judgment. He hadn’t known what the Stone was when it was still inside of the Orb, and when he’d caught it later, it had been an intentional choice, a sacrifice for a billion other lives. “You threw yourself out into space without a mask.”

He shrugs. “What can I say? Maybe I’d rather die than lose another friend.”

The thought of him dying, especially because of her, sends a rush of panic through her that she does her best to tamp down. Still...as much as she hates the idea, she has to admit that she feels the same way about the reverse situation; losing Groot, one of her only friends, so soon after meeting him has been painful in ways she’d never have expected. 

Which is why she doesn’t want Peter, or any of these other irritating, wonderful idiots to die because they’ve been foolish enough to associate with her. The idea of losing any more of them -- especially Peter, her traitorous thoughts say -- is more painful than she can bear. But if she leaves, she loses them anyway. An incredibly selfish thought, perhaps, but it’s one that’s kept her from leaving the past couple days, no matter how much she’s told herself she ought to. 

Peter is busying himself sipping his hot chocolate, but he’s not hiding that vulnerability well. She wonders how he ever manages to pull off a con when his emotions are so plain on his face. 

“I still don’t like the idea of my enemies using you against me,” she says at last. 

“Well, who would?” he says almost casually. “But we’re a lot stronger as a team than we are by ourselves. We’re stronger _with_ you.” 

“All of us together would be nothing more than a nuisance to Thanos if he decided to come for us,” she says darkly. She can’t help picturing it -- the dark, fiery ring in the sky heralding the approach of his ship, the crowds running and screaming, the decimation of the whole planet -- any planet where they might try to hide -- until he finds them. Torture, certainly, for the others. Torture for her as she’s forced to watch. And then, inevitably, death. 

“He hasn’t so far,” says Peter.

Gamora takes a shaky breath, blows it back out. It isn’t as though that hasn’t occurred to her. It’s only making the whole situation more unnerving. Perhaps he’s giving her a chance to come back. Or perhaps he’s biding his time, trying to lull her into false comfort, letting her get attached so it will hurt all the more when it’s all ripped away.

“He will,” she insists. “He will, and then anyone who has ever helped me will be sorry.”

Peter regards her for a moment, clearly taking in what she’s just said, really feeling the weight of it. And then he smiles. “Nah. I’ve always been really bad at apologies.”

Gamora just stares at him for a second, processing that. Then she makes a choked sound, something like a strangled laugh, not sure if she’s amused or horrified by the fact that he doesn’t seem to be taking this seriously. “Peter,” she says, covering her face with one hand. She can’t help but smile a little. “I’m serious.” 

“So am I,” he says, his smile somewhat of a smirk now. “I’m terrible at them.” 

“ _Peter_.”

“What?” he says innocently. He leans back against the counter and nudges her shoulder with his. She’d been looking at him through her spread fingers but she lowers her hand anyway and fixes him with the most unamused look she can muster. 

“Look,” he says, a little more seriously. “I don’t know this Thanos guy. He sounds like a real turd. So obviously I can’t promise you that he’s never gonna try shit. But there’s no point in spending your whole life dreading that, making yourself miserable. And right now, we’re all gonna be miserable if you leave, and happy if you stay. So why not stay?”

She presses her lips together, tempted, wishing it was as simple as he’s making it out to be. Perhaps it can be, though. She may not deserve happiness, but Peter certainly does. The others do. And if she stays with them, she can do good with whatever time she’s got left. Maybe make up for some of the horrors of her past. 

She takes a deep breath. “All right. I will stay--”

“Yes!” Peter exclaims, instantly so excited that he nearly sloshes the hot chocolate over the side of his cup. He glances down at that, seems to decide he doesn’t care, and does a fist pump.

“I will stay _for now_ ,” she interrupts. It’s what she meant to say to begin with, not prepared to fully, permanently commit yet to what feels like a death sentence for the others. Still, it pains her to say something that she knows will be disappointing.

Instead, she sees the gears in Peter’s head turning as he considers his next move, the man she knows is a master negotiator emerging again. “Well, I guess that’s fair. It’s not like I’m asking you to sell your soul to the Guardians. But, if you want me to quit bugging you, you’re gonna have to promise me something.”

She narrows her eyes, aware that she’s being manipulated, but somehow not able to care enough to disengage. “What?”

“No more sneaking out in the middle of the night,” says Peter. “If you wanna leave, come say goodbye.”

“Oh,” she says, surprised. That is fair, and a much simpler request than she was expecting. “I suppose I can do that.”

“Awesome!” He grins, then holds his cup out towards her, a gesture she recognizes from the last time they had hot chocolate.

“Is this a requirement every time we drink anything?” she asks, but when his smile starts to droop she relents. “Fine.” She taps her cup very lightly against his, wary of how clumsy he’s been with it and not wanting him to spill any more. 

His smile returns and he takes a big drink. He meets her eyes over the brim of his cup. There’s still something about his expression that’s distinctly vulnerable, but somehow in a happier kind of way now. 

She feels her abdomen get warmer, and tries to put it out of her mind.


	4. Chapter 4

The bar is grating in almost every way.

It’s far nicer than the one on Knowhere, for certain. And it’s also nicer than many of the ones Gamora has been to in pursuit of marks on places like Contraxia or Sakaar. But that still doesn’t mean it’s a place she would ever choose to come to on her own. Or one that she’s all that pleased to be in now.

The music is loud, the lights from the small dance floor end up flashing in her eyes every few seconds, and there are far too many people for her to easily keep track of. It’s a combination that sets all of her enhanced senses on edge, her instincts warning her that an attack might be coming at any time. At least on Xandar, she’d had some reason to believe she might be regarded as a hero. If she gets recognized here…

And then there’s the fact that she’s been alone with Peter for the past few minutes, since Rocket left with Groot and Drax got pulled into some sort of shady-looking card game happening in one of the back corners. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Peter, but he’s getting increasingly intoxicated and she can’t help remembering the story that ended with him naked and restrained on a bed. Which is just an infuriating image to have in her mind.

“These seats are comfy,” he mutters, looking down at the cushion of the round booth they’re in as if just noticing that they’re there. He squirms a bit, moving back and forth, getting closer to her and farther from her by turns. She tries not to visibly tense. 

“Do you spend a lot of time on Krylor?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at him; she seems to remember more than one of his lewd stories involving Krylorians. Perhaps that is his type, she thinks, a note of bitterness in that thought she chooses not to acknowledge. 

“I guess.” He shrugs. “It’s a good way station, you know. Fuel’s pretty cheap, it’s a good place to stock up on supplies, and it’s in between a lot of places.” Then he hiccups and knocks back the rest of his drink, a neon blue concoction she wouldn’t touch with a ten foot sword. 

“I need another drink,” Peter says, turning his empty glass upside down and looking around hopefully for a passing waiter. There’s not much by way of food served here, but there’ve been several of them walking around with trays of drinks. “Lemme get you one!”

She wrinkles her nose. “No, thank you.” 

“Aw, c’mon!” he pleads. “You should be celebrating too!” 

“There is no point,” she insists. “I can’t get drunk. And I would not trust the drinks here. Are you going to get drunk every time we complete a--” She almost says ‘mission,’ but that’s a word Thanos would have used, which means she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want it to be fitting for anything that she does with her life now. “--a job?” she finishes, feeling lame about it.

Peter shrugs, catching sight of a waiter across the room and waving with ridiculous enthusiasm. Then he turns back to her, leaning in close enough for his breath to brush her face. “Why not? You’re s’posed to celebrate a job well done!”

The waiter -- male, she’s happy to see, though it doesn’t stop Peter from taking in his good looks -- comes over, offering the tray with a smile. 

“Thanks!” Peter says enthusiastically, then snags two and puts one in front of Gamora despite her attempts to decline. 

“Is drinking after every job the Ravager way?” she asks, as the waiter goes to serve another table.

Peter pauses, looking strangely bothered by that, then shrugs again. “‘S a good way!”

“It seems like they must drink rather a lot that way,” she observes. There was a definite smell of alcohol permeating the Ravagers’ ship, so she supposes that makes sense. 

“Well, hey,” he says, taking a long drink from his glass. “We just--liberated a buncha stuff from the Ravagers. Why not celebrate like ‘em?” 

Gamora makes a noncommittal noise. His use of the word _liberated_ might be a bit loose, but they definitely weren’t stealing, she tells herself. It doesn’t count as stealing if the items were stolen in the first place. 

After leaving Xandar, Peter’s idea of _a bit of both_ good and bad had been to “liberate” some stuff from one of the Ravagers’ stashes and return it to the people it was stolen from. So they’d broken into a stash on a nearby moon and found loads of jewels, stolen from a community where they were considered quite important. The queen had been so grateful, she’d paid them much better than Gamora would have expected for their return. 

And now Peter is apparently determined to blow as many of those units as possible on vibrantly colored alcohol, which he’s drinking rather quickly. Even Drax and Rocket, when they were here, weren’t drinking this fast. She hopes this isn’t usual behavior for Peter; though if it isn’t, that’s its own kind of concerning. 

“Do Terrans have a resistance to alcohol?” she asks warily, as it occurs to her that she doesn’t actually know how his biology might differ from the others’ in that way. _She_ certainly could drink as quickly as he is without any consequences at all. But she’s pretty certain that isn’t the case for him.

Peter drains the glass and then wipes his mouth with the back of a hand. “Huh?”

She sighs. He clearly _isn’t_ resistant to this sort of intoxication, but now she’s committed to asking the question. “I asked if Terrans had a high tolerance for alcohol.”

He shrugs, and there’s something decidedly bitter about it. “How would I know? Terran kids don’t drink! That’d be illegal!”

“ _You_ are Terran, Peter,” she says, trying not to get irritated. “Surely that gives you some idea of what the typical tolerance level is.” 

“I’m not Terran,” he says, the bitterness in his voice strong and unmistakable now. “Not all the way, anyway. So how would I know if my tolerance level is the same as a regular Terran’s, or the same as whatever the hell else I am?” 

Oh, Gamora thinks, irritation fading. She is used to not being fully one thing or another at this point. So many parts of her are not her own, have been replaced by cybernetics and artificial parts. Peter’s only just learned that he’s not one hundred percent what he always thought he was. 

The heavy drinking makes sense to her now. 

“Is that what you’re trying to forget?” asks Gamora, studying him. It’s been clear from the beginning that he identifies strongly with his mother and with Earth. Perhaps the new information that he isn’t entirely of that culture makes him feel as though he’s lost something. She certainly knows that feeling, the fresh sense of loss.

Peter blinks at her. “Huh?” His cheeks are flushed, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow, his eyes just a little bit glassy.

“You are drinking yourself into a stupor,” she says pointedly, nodding toward his already-empty glass. “Is it because you are upset about the information you learned from the Nova Corps?”

“What, that my criminal record’s gone? I mean, ‘m a little sad about not bein’ an outlaw anymore, but…” He trails off, and for a moment Gamora thinks he’s legitimately misunderstood. Then he laughs uproariously, ending on a belch that seems to surprise him somehow.

She wrinkles her nose, wondering how she can possibly still feel the silver on her abdomen when Peter’s acting like _this_. Her body must be glitching worse than she’d thought.

“Clearly you know what I meant,” she says. 

He shrugs one shoulder carelessly, pushes his empty glass to the side and picks up the one he’d ostensibly ordered for her. She honestly doesn’t know whether he remembers it was supposed to be hers; not that she was planning to drink it, but it doesn’t bode well for his level of sobriety. 

“I don’t care about that,” he says, one of the least convincing lies she’s ever heard, including Nebula’s attempts. “I’m just not who I thought I was. No big deal.” He takes a large swig of the drink. 

Gamora struggles internally. As uncouth as he’s acting at the moment, he is...her friend. And she hates to see him upset. She’s unsure if she’s going to be able to comfort him, but she’s got to at least try. 

“Yes, you are,” she says firmly. He picks his head up a bit, looking at her instead of down at his drink. “You were born on Terra. It is your home planet and you have a deep connection to it. And you are still your mother’s son.” 

Peter rolls his eyes at that, surprising her. Thus far, he’s been more than receptive to any small gesture of kindness she’s attempted, even against her better judgment. But this makes him bristle for some reason. “You don’t have to do that.”

She sets her jaw, still not about to back down now that she’s committed to making him feel better. Also not about to be accused of something that’s clearly displeased him. “Do what? Tell you the truth?”

He picks up the glass again, looks back and forth between it and her as if suddenly remembering that he wasn’t meant to be drinking it. Then he shrugs and knocks back the rest of it in a single swallow. “Pity me.”

For a moment all she can do is gape at him, equal parts hurt and incensed. She knows she isn’t good at being kind, has _no idea_ how to provide comfort, but she’s _trying._ If that’s really what he thinks… “If I pitied you, I would not be here.”

His eyes widen, and now it’s his turn to gape at her with clear surprise. “Really?”

“Yes,” she says simply, attempting to keep the emotion out of her voice. “I am _trying_ to help you. You said we are friends. Isn’t that something friends do?” The word _friends_ still feels awkward on her tongue, but he was right when he called her out on it in the hotel; she had said they were friends before and she’d meant it. Now it’s time to stand by it.

He blinks, the alcohol probably affecting his brain. Then he smiles, a slow, small thing, but genuine. He almost looks sober. “Yeah, it is. Thanks, Gamora.” 

“You--are welcome,” she says stiffly. Now what is she supposed to say? Does she continue questioning him? Does he feel better now, should she just let it go?

Luckily, Peter solves that for her, answering a previous question as if she’s only just asked it. “But that’s not--no. That’s not what I’m trying to forget. Not entirely, anyway.” 

Just when Gamora thinks they’re getting somewhere, Peter gets distracted by another passing waiter and grabs two more drinks. 

“Peter,” she says, trying to get his attention back, hoping that maybe if she gets him talking again, he’ll stop drinking quite so quickly.

“Huh?” he asks, sloshing some of one of the drinks over his wrist as he puts them down on the table. He glances down at that, then shrugs and licks what he can manage off his skin.

She wrinkles her nose. “If one of those is for me, I am still not drinking it. Perhaps you should start ordering single drinks? Or drinks without alcohol in them.”

“What’s the point o’ that?” he asks, his words still more a drawl than a slur, but from the way he’s moving, he’s much more drunk than that would suggest. He probably has a lot of experience functioning under the influence of alcohol, she thinks. 

She sighs. “Fine. Can we get back to the point of this conversation, please?”

He looks thoroughly at a loss for a second, but then his eyes brighten again. “Oh! You wanna know what I’m forgetting to drink!”

“I wish,” Gamora says dryly.

Peter appears confused again, but then he laughs as he seems to realize his mistake. He laughs so violently that he sloshes his drink again, some of it spilling onto the table. 

“Forgetting to drink!” he repeats, then laughs harder. “I mean--I mean--forgetting to--drinking to forget!” He’s still laughing when he throws back some more of his drink and some of it ends up dribbling down his chin. 

Gamora makes a face and hands him a napkin, which he uses clumsily to wipe his entire face. “Yes,” she says, “that was the original point of the conversation.”

“Well--the whole _point_ is that I’m tryna forget it!” he points out, laughter faded to a chuckle. Before she can reply, he gestures to the other drink. “C’mon, you sure you don’t wanna celebrate? Alcohol’s good for that. And for forgetting!” 

“It would not make me forget anything,” Gamora sighs. “And I am not drinking that.”

“What about a different kind?” he asks. Then he throws his hand up to signal another passing waiter and Gamora’s patience runs out. 

“No!” she says firmly, grabbing his hand out of the air and lowering it back to the table -- not roughly, but not exactly gently either. “No more, Peter. You are going to drink yourself sick.” 

He blinks at her, then down at their hands. 

Gamora pulls her hands back quickly, feeling a fresh wave of paranoia that touching him is somehow going to allow him to sense the silver. Then again, he probably wouldn’t recognize anything that meaningful in this condition if it bit him on the nose.

“Still got one drink left,” he says a bit petulantly, eyeing the glass. 

“Yes,” says Gamora, understanding immediately where his mind is going. “But you got it for me, and you do _not_ need any more, so you are not going to drink it.”

He gives her a doleful look. “But you said you’re not gonna drink it. Can’t just _leave_ it there, that’d be a waste.”

“You can and you will,” she says sternly, then immediately hates how much those words sound like something Thanos would have said to one of his children in a lesson about temptation.

Peter sticks out his lower lip in an honest to god pout. “Can’t and won’t.”

She sees what he’s going to do in her mind’s eye a moment before he snakes his hand out toward the glass. That plus her enhanced reflexes allows her to snag it a split second faster, picking up the glass and downing its contents in a single long swallow, with no thought to anything but preventing _him_ from doing it first.

He gapes at her, and while she’s shocked herself at her own actions, she can’t help but feel proud that she’s managed to shock him as well. Though she still fears she’s unable to trust drinks from outside sources, especially establishments like these...but Peter has been relatively fine so far. She supposes she’ll find out soon. 

“I can’t believe you just did that,” he says, sounding almost impressed. 

“Well, now I have celebrated,” she says, pushing the glass away, trying to act casual. “So now you can stop trying to celebrate enough to pass out.” 

Peter makes a face, sighs, and slumps back against the booth. She hates seeing him like this; not just this drunk, but sad enough to get this way in the first place. Now she wonders if she’s perhaps pushed him too far. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” she offers. “But you do have to not kill yourself with alcohol.” 

“I wasn’t gonna,” he mutters petulantly. He’s tracing his finger around some of the condensation left on the table, and she thinks this is all she’s going to get from him when he adds, “I couldn’t take her hand. That’s all she wanted, and I couldn’t do it.” 

Gamora frowns, trying to follow his line of thought. She’s immediately suspicious that he’s about to launch into yet another ex-girlfriend story, perhaps even about someone in this bar. If it turns out _that’s_ what he’s drinking to forget, she might just murder him herself. Then again, that doesn’t really fit with what he’s said about about his heritage, or the vulnerability in his mood. Most of his stories about his spurned lovers have been light-hearted, if not outright bragging.

“Who?” she asks finally, hoping it isn’t a mistake.

“My mom,” says Peter, like it ought to be obvious. Then he shakes himself, seeming to realize that he hasn’t actually explained the context. He runs a hand across his eyes, then back through his hair, clearing his throat. “She uh -- She died. The same day Yondu abducted me, actually.”

He motions to another waiter and she’s about to stop him before she realizes that this time the glass he’s snagging off the tray contains water.

“That is awful,” Gamora says, knowing the words are inadequate but not knowing how she could possibly make that better. She had suspected, based on the way Peter talks about her, that his mother is dead, but he’s never said so until now. 

He nods. He takes a slow sip of water, his grip on it much tighter than necessary. His throat works as he swallows. “Yeah. She was...really sick. For a long time. It was slow.” 

“Peter…” she says. She goes to reach for him, wanting to offer some kind of comfort, but she stops herself, unsure. 

He doesn’t seem to notice, staring down into his water glass as if watching the memories he’s speaking of. “She was so weak she could barely talk. I knew what was happening. She--she asked me to take her hand.” His mouth screws up, and Gamora’s surprised -- but not _that_ surprised -- to see tears in his eyes. “I couldn’t do it, though. I looked away. Her last dying wish and I looked away. By the time I looked back, she was dead.” 

“So...you blame yourself?” she asks, half guessing, half wanting to clarify. If she is going to attempt something as outside her wheelhouse as offering comfort, she doesn’t want to be confused about the nature of what he needs.

He snaps his head up to look at her, clear in his expression that it should have been obvious. “Well yeah. How could I not? I failed her.”

She presses her lips together, unsure of which direction to take this. She does not want to offer false comfort; if he is right in blaming himself, then it will be pointless for her to try and convince him otherwise. She knows that from personal experience, and she’s scarcely more than a stranger to him besides. 

“How old were you?” she asks finally. That context matters, she’s pretty sure. At least she hopes it does, since it’s part of what she’s been telling herself for years when her own guilty memories surface. Then again, perhaps that only makes her even more the monster.

“Eight,” he says. About her age when her life was turned upside down by Thanos. “Old enough to be able to hold my mother’s hand when she asked me to.” 

“And young enough to be terrified that she was dying,” she points out. 

He shrugs a shoulder, tracing his finger around the rim of his glass. “Still. I could’ve made her happy right before she died. Instead I disappointed her.” 

Gamora grips the edge of the table, thinking of what her own mother’s dying thoughts would have been; how she also failed her mother by allowing herself to be led away by Thanos, be distracted by a blade instead of continuing her search for her. It’s a mental exercise that she can’t help but repeat quite often, though it brings her nothing but pain. 

“From what you have told me,” she says after weighing her words, “your mother was a good, kind woman. I don’t think she would blame you in the slightest for being too scared to watch her die.” 

“No,” says Peter, surprising her. “She wouldn't have, because she was the best mom -- the best _person_ ever. But I still know what she deserved and I know that I didn't give it to her. You know?”

Gamora nods, painfully aware of the many times she's had this same argument with herself and come to the same conclusion. Perhaps she has more in common with him than she has allowed herself to consider. 

“I know,” she says finally, softly. She looks down and finds her hand inching toward his on the table again, like her entire body has decided to betray her somehow. She snatches it back quickly, and mentally blames the drink, though she knows it was no match for her enhanced metabolism. 

Peter sniffles and wipes his nose with the back of a hand she's suddenly very glad to not be touching. His eyes are filled with a hope so genuine that it almost breaks her heart. “You do? Because you--you lost your mom too?”

“What made you think of it now?” she asks, aware that it's an abrupt swerve of topic and that her tone is probably more harsh than it should be. But she is not prepared to share more about herself right now. 

“Oh,” he says, surprised. Thankfully he doesn’t push her, just goes with the change of subject. “Well, it’s--pretty weird. Dumb, maybe. I don’t really know what it was.” 

She waits for a second to see if he’s going to elaborate, but he appears lost in thought, or in the appearance of the water in his glass. So she says, “That is--clarifying, thank you.”

He snorts, looking up at her again. “You’re real funny when you wanna be, you know that?” 

Gamora has never considered herself funny, or anything remotely positive, really. She’s been called funny a few other times in her life, but always derisively, and usually before someone attacks her, and she subsequently kills them. Peter sounds genuinely impressed, though, and pleased. She attempts to ignore the way she both metaphorically and _literally_ \--stupid silver--glows at that. 

“What was weird?” she persists, refusing to be sidetracked. 

He sighs. “Did you...see anything? When we held the Stone? Anything that wasn’t really there, I mean?”

“No,” she says slowly, catching on. “Just you. And a lot of purple. Are you saying you hallucinated?” 

“I guess,” he says with another half-shrug. “I don’t know. It felt so real. But it couldn’t have been.” 

“What was it?” she asks, torn between frustration at his inability to give her a straight answer and curiosity about the thoughts he hasn't shared yet.

There's also a tiny sliver of an emotion that might be jealousy, though she tells herself that's ridiculous. If he had some kind of crazy Infinity Stone vision, she probably ought to be grateful to have been spared it. After all, she's seen what happened to the old Terran scientist who'd been in the Mind Stone's thrall. 

“My mom,” says Peter, breaking into her reverie. “In her hospital bed, just like the day she--she--” He breaks off, making a sound that might be either a sob or a hiccup. “She was asking me to take her hand, just like she did in real life. But we were in space! And there was this -- this weird planet, too. I coulda sworn it had a face.”

She gets a flash of memory, of holding her hand out and asking him to take it through a cloud of swirling purple _something_. It makes sense that it would trigger _that_ kind of hallucination in him. 

“The Infinity Stones are very powerful,” she says, hedging because she doesn’t want to accuse him of hallucinating if it feels real to him. “I am not surprised that it was able to make you see—something. Especially given—what I said.” He looks confused, so she elaborates. “I told you to take my hand.” 

“Oh, right,” he says, shaking his head. He takes another drink of water, then a deep breath. “Well—real or not or...whatever, it’s—I can’t get it out of my mind. I keep seeing her.” 

“And that is what you want to forget?” she asks, understanding. “I do not blame you.” 

“No?” he asks, a hopeful lilt in his voice. 

“No,” she echoes, hoping that will somehow be enough to satisfy him. She still isn’t quite sure how to tread the boundaries of kindness, how to relate without sharing parts of herself she isn’t ready to revisit let alone reveal.

“Why?” he insists, immediately dashing her hopes. He isn’t being obnoxious, though, she’s certain. He just looks lost now, and younger than she ever would have imagined possible.

She takes a deep breath, blows it out again. She has to give him _something._ Something real. He’s taken far too big a chance for her to deny him that. 

“I used to dream of my parents,” says Gamora, after another long moment of nothing but the din of the bar between them. “After Thanos--After my homeworld was destroyed. I dreamed of them every night.”

“Damn,” says Peter, taking a long swig of his water like it might also help him forget. “What did you do?”

Gamora shrugs. “I...stopped sleeping.”

His eyes widen. “What, like, forever? You just never sleep?” 

“I have to sleep sometimes,” she says, though she would much prefer it if she didn’t. How much safer she would be if she didn’t ever need to lie unconscious. “Just not as much as most species. So I stay up when I can. Sometimes for several days.” 

“That doesn’t sound fun,” he mutters, his brow furrowed in what might be concern. 

She shrugs. “If I am exhausted enough before I fall asleep, I tend to dream less.”

“Oh,” he says softly. He nods. “That works for me too, sometimes; I’ve done that before. Sleep is lame.” His mouth twists into a sad, almost angry expression, as if sleep has personally offended him. “I used to try to stay up later when I was a kid, to spend more time with my mom. But I always ended up falling asleep. Then when I woke up, I was all tucked in bed.” 

She can’t help but smile at the image of little Peter trying and failing to stay awake, though it’s heartbreaking too. “Your mother sounds very sweet.” He does too, but she doesn’t say that part. She scolds herself for even thinking it. 

“Yeah,” he says immediately, sounding far more certain of and enthusiastic about that than pretty much anything else in this conversation. “She was amazing. The best mom anyone could’a had.” He pauses, seeming to consider this, then scratches his head awkwardly. “I mean...no offense to your mom, of course.”

Gamora smiles wider despite herself, unaccustomed to such consideration. She would scoff were it aimed at her, but toward her mother...There’s something undeniably pleasing about that, especially after twenty years of hearing Thanos ridicule her people.

“I am sure my mother would not take any,” she says. 

“What about your dad?” he asks, sounding scarcely older than a child again, and almost a bit desperate. “Was he -- did you -- have a dad?”

She frowns, thrown by his question. “My race requires sexual reproduction, yes.”

“I mean, yeah,” says Peter, rubbing his face again. “I did too, obviously, but like...I never actually had a dad even though I _had_ one.”

“That sounds impossible,” she says. Perhaps this is some Terran custom or phrasing she’s not understanding. Or perhaps he’s just incoherent because he’s drunk. 

“No, I mean--” He makes a face and rubs his hands over his eyes like he’s trying to wake up, which supports her drunk theory. It’s hardly surprising that the volume of alcohol he’s had is making it difficult to think. He manages, though. “I had a dad. But I never met him. He was never around.”

“Oh,” Gamora says softly, feeling a bit stupid for not getting that. “Did he die?”

He shakes his head. “No. Well, I don’t know. I guess he could have. Sometimes I said that he’d died in a heroic battle against some bad guys, when kids at school made fun of me for not having a dad.” 

She stiffens, the increasingly familiar surge of anger on his behalf flowing through her again. “You got teased for not having a father?” 

He shrugs a shoulder. “Got teased for lots of stuff. But yeah. Everyone else had a dad. Or at least it seemed that way to me.” 

“I am sure not everyone did,” says Gamora, though it sounds like an unconvincing platitude to her ears. In truth, she has no way of knowing how remarkable he might be for a Terran. Much as she might be loath to admit it, he does seem to be fairly exceptional just based on the fact that he’s managed to survive in space.

“I didn’t know anyone else who didn’t,” he says petulantly. He runs a finger around the rim of his water glass, then tips it over.

Gamora snakes her hand out again lightning-quick, catching the glass before it can fall and spill. Peter looks up at her, gaping in a clear expression of wonder, almost adoration. She rolls her eyes, rejecting the wordless praise.

“Terran children sound exceptionally mean,” she says, thinking of her peers on her homeworld. She doesn’t remember much, but the few memories she does have don’t include any bullying. “Is that because it is a planet of outlaws?”

“Probably,” he says seriously. “They were a buncha jerks. I always hoped one day my dad would come back, and he’d be super cool so I could rub it in all their faces.” 

“That would have been quite satisfying,” she says, thinking of all the people she’d like to get revenge on. For very different reasons, and in a very different manner, but still. Though now she _would_ also like to get revenge on all the people who hurt Peter. 

“It totally would have,” he says. He drinks the rest of his water that she kept him from spilling, then puts the glass down on the table much harder than necessary; she’s not sure he can control it, or if he even notices. “Sometimes I’d pretend David Hasselhoff was my dad.” 

Those sound like nonsense words to her, but she gathers from context that he’s talking about a person. “Who?”

“David Hasselhoff,” he repeats, as if that’s going to help at all. “He’s really cool.” Then he hiccups and looks plaintively at his empty water glass. “Are you sure I can’t have another drink?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she says firmly. It’s not like she’s in charge of him, but he seems to have forgotten that at the moment, so she’s gonna roll with it. “You’re already glassy-eyed, Peter, you’ve had plenty.” 

He waggles his eyebrows at her in a way that would probably be obnoxious were he not so utterly ridiculous. “You sayin’ I’ve got a glint in my eye?”

She sighs heavily. “Peter.”

He shrugs, probably attempting to look suave, but managing only ridiculous. 

“Who is David Hoffelhass?” she asks, mainly to redirect him away from his wish to drink himself to death. Plus she’s curious, no matter how much she wants to curse herself for that.

“Oh!” he says, brightening again, his attempts at cool detachment immediately abandoned. “He was this really famous guy on TV! He had a car that could talk, and it was his best friend, and it helped him catch bad guys and solve crimes and stuff.”

“That does not sound like he would have had much time to raise a child,” Gamora agrees, though she isn’t exactly following. She knows that certain Terrans do have impressive AI technology, but as far as she understands, it isn’t common. And this would have been at least twenty years ago, unless Peter has somehow aged much faster than the rest of his race.

“Yeah, well,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, “the car thing was fake, you know. It was for a TV show, so it was pretend.”

“Ah,” Gamora says, trying to sound as though she understands. The way he’s talked about TV shows and movies on Terra, she has trouble picturing it, but feels foolish for being unable to. 

“But he was filming it all the time,” Peter continues. “And he was a singer, so he definitely wouldn’t have had time! Which is why it worked out perfectly to tell kids he was my dad. I’d say he couldn’t be around because he was busy shooting the show and being a kickass rockstar!” 

“And did that work?” she asks, though she has a suspicion as to the answer. 

“No,” he says, shoulders slumping. He’s twisting his empty cup around between his hands, staring into the glass. “Didn’t stop me from trying, though. I even cut a picture of him out of a magazine and carried it around, so I could show a picture of him.” His hands suddenly pause and he snorts. “Wow, that sounds really pathetic when I say it out loud.” 

“Children are often pathetic,” says Gamora. It’s the first thought that comes to mind, and it’s honest. 

Peter surprises her by laughing. It starts as a giggle and just keeps getting bigger until he’s gasping, tears streaming down his face. Then he starts to hiccup, which makes him laugh even harder, which starts the whole cycle all over again.

“Peter,” she says, when this has gone on for several minutes, and she’s honestly starting to get concerned about his breathing. She motions to the waiter who brought the water and snags another glass for him. “Peter, stop. You are going to pass out.”

“Okay,” he gasps. “Okay, okay.” He takes the water from her, manages a shaky sip, then spits it out as he dissolves into yet another fit of laughter.

Gamora wrinkles her nose, wiping water off the sleeve of her jacket in disgust.

“Sorry,” he manages after a second, then reaches out and tries to do more wiping himself, which is the opposite of helpful. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. But--that was totally your fault.”

“How?” she asks, utterly baffled by his drunken train of thought. 

“You made me laugh!” He points an accusing finger at her, annoyingly close to her face. 

“I didn’t mean to,” she says, as if this is a behavior she needs to defend. Besides, she doesn’t think anything has ever been funny enough to justify that amount of laughter. 

He giggles again. “That makes it even funnier!” 

She’s growing concerned that he’s even drunker than she thought he was, when another waitress comes over with two glowing shots on a tray. 

“No, thank you,” Gamora says firmly, but the waitress doesn’t budge. 

“They’ve already been paid for,” she says, pointing to a table across the room, where a group of Xandarians are waving at them and smiling. “They said they know what you did, and wanted to say thank you?” 

The waitress doesn’t seem to know what they’re referring to, but Gamora and Peter obviously do. Peter perks up and waves back at them enthusiastically with his whole arm, as if he’s trying to be seen from miles away rather than across a room. Then he snags both shots with a shit-eating grin. “Thank you!”

“No,” says Gamora, sternly. She’s hoping against hope that if she just manages to sound authoritative enough, he might continue to listen to her, might put the shots down and…

...and then what? She certainly isn’t going to drink them, no matter what rash decision she might have made earlier. Maybe she’ll simply turn them out under the table and hope that the Xandarians don’t see. 

“Yes,” says Peter, still grinning obnoxiously. The drinks are closer to him than they are to her, and she can see him calculating. Her authority is dead, then, apparently. 

“ _No!_ ” she insists, but then Peter is diving for the shots, managing to down one of them before she can react at all. 

Gamora flat-out tackles him, pinning his legs and one of his arms before he’s managed to do anything. He continues to resist her, though, somehow wriggling out of her grasp just enough to snag the other shot. He attempts to pour it into his mouth, though mostly it just goes all over his face.

He’s giggling like--well, like a drunken idiot, and hiccuping too. Now that the damage is done, Gamora stares at him for a moment before the reality of the situation slams into her: she’s lying half on top of him in the booth of a crowded bar full of strangers, at least some of whom clearly recognize her. 

She glances up to see the waitress is watching them with wide eyes. As soon as she meets Gamora’s eyes she turns and walks away as fast as she can. 

“Dammit, Peter,” she growls, blushing furiously as she rips herself away from him, sitting up and scooting away. 

“What?” he asks innocently, the word a little slurred. He attempts to sit up as well but ends up stumbling, supporting himself with his elbow on the table and a hand on the back of the booth, and still not managing to sit up all the way. 

He is being a moron. But she can’t just let him do this to himself. 

“We are leaving,” she says decisively. 

“No, c’mon,” he whines. “We can’t leave yet.” 

She ignores him and slides out of the booth, then grabs his hand, which is sticky with the drink he’s clumsily spilled all over it, to pull him out as well. “That was not a request.” 

“Noooo,” he repeats, his tone even more petulant now as he tries to tug back on her hand. His bulk might be larger than hers, but she’s still far stronger. He pulls a few times, then gives up, pouting up at her. “I don’t wanna.”

“ _Peter,_ ” she says warningly, then glares at him. 

Finally he relents, sighing. “Fine. _Fine._ I gotta pee anyway.” 

Gamora wrinkles her nose, wondering for the millionth time how she could possibly be _silver_ for such an embarrassing child of a man. “I could have lived without that knowledge, thank you very much.”

He grins, then does that stupid eyebrow waggle thing again. “You’re welcome.”

Then he tries to get up, which goes about as well as she probably ought to have predicted. He stands, tries to slide out of the booth, but trips over his own feet so that he sits down again hard. That makes him giggle before he makes another attempt, this time managing to move very slowly, holding onto the edge of the table. When he gets to the outside of it, though, he pauses again, looking lost because there’s nothing else obviously available to prop himself against. 

Gamora wrestles with herself, but there’s really no way around this. So she sighs and grabs his arm, throwing it around her shoulders. “Come on. I’ll help you.” 

“Thanks, G’mora,” he says, words a bit slurred. 

She grunts and starts moving forward, putting her arm around his back for extra support. “Let’s just go back to the ship.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, his grin positively obnoxious. “You know, it’s super hot when you give me orders like that.” 

“You are ridiculous,” she says, unable to make the words come out with as much bite as she wants them to. She studiously ignores the dumb look on his face as they make their way out of the bar; she also ignores the irritating surge in warmth on her abdomen.

* * *

She doesn’t sleep that night. 

Peter was basically half asleep by the time they made it back to the Milano. She had to practically lift him onto his bed, as the combination of drunkenness and sleepiness made him lose any coordination he might have had. Once she got him settled, he’d muttered something that might have been a _thank you_ and promptly passed out. 

Rocket is curled up in the pilot’s chair with Groot in his pot, stubbornly ignoring anything else that might be going on. It’s not like he’s about to need to fly the thing, since they’re firmly docked for at least another day. Drax stumbled in several hours after Gamora had dragged Peter in, staggering around like a drugged Moomba. He doesn’t have anyone to assist him, and he makes so much noise that she actually considers getting up to do it herself just so he doesn’t wake Peter. Fortunately, he faceplants into his own bunk, snoring loudly enough to at least assure her that he’s still breathing.

For his part, Peter appears to be sleeping fitfully, his brow glistening with a light sheen of sweat. She knows, rationally, that he’s probably had this much and more to drink on many prior occasions. And yet, she can’t quite shake her own concern that he’s managed to poison himself, either by having so much alcohol or by someone slipping something into his drink, or perhaps both. So she’s spent the night doing research on the holo that she’s beginning to consider hers, scrounging for the limited information on Terran physiology.

When Peter finally wakes up, well past the beginning of the ship’s morning cycle, she’s gathered enough information to know that he’s going to be feeling horrible. So she’s not surprised when he comes to with a pained groan, squeezing his eyes back shut as soon as they flutter open. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, his entire face screwed up in pain. “It’s too light in here.” 

“It is dim at best,” Gamora says softly, though she winces in sympathy. She’s rarely ever been sick, and only ever when recovering from a modification surgery, but on the occasions she has it’s been awful. 

Peter’s eyes fly open and he jerks his head to the side, an action he seems to immediately regret. He closes his eyes again and puts his hand over his forehead. “Fuck,” he says again. “Gamora?” He peeks one eye open to squint at her. 

“Yes,” she confirms, wondering if perhaps he can’t see properly. 

“What’re you doin’?” he asks. 

“Making sure you don’t die,” she says. Then she holds out the tray she’s had this whole time, which he doesn’t seem to have noticed, closer to him. His eye widens in surprise as he takes it in. It’s just a glass of water and a painkiller. 

She expects him to be pleased, or at least relieved. She thinks maybe he’ll sit up and grab the pills, down them with the water, happy that he’ll be able to be out of pain that much faster.

Instead he continues to gape at her. “How did--were you--watching me sleep?”

“ _No,_ ” she says sharply, her cheeks instantly hot. She _was_ doing exactly that for all of the time she didn’t spend reading about Terran intoxication or gathering supplies for anything he might need. She isn’t about to admit that, though. It sounds pathetic, even inside of her head.

“Then how’d you get here?” asks Peter, clearly disbelieving her even in his distracted state.

“I can sense stupidity,” she says dryly, then instantly regrets it when she sees the hurt in his face. He covers it quickly, but it’s definitely there. Gamora sighs. “Do you want these meds or do you want to keep feeling like shit?”

He sits up a bit more with a groan, grabs the pills and swallows them with a large swig of water. Then he gags a bit, clearly fighting down nausea. Fortunately he succeeds.

“You should drink that water in order to rehydrate,” she says, parroting the information she’d read. “But not that quickly.” 

“Are you some kind of expert in hangovers?” he asks, but obligingly takes a much smaller sip. “Seems weird, if you can’t get drunk.” 

“I am far from an expert,” she says. 

He takes another sip, thankfully more cooperative than he was last night. She wonders how long that will last. Then he makes a face, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times. “My mouth feels like something crawled inside it and died.”

“That is disturbing,” she says, wrinkling her nose, both at the description and the fact that her enhanced sense of smell picks up on his breath. It’s an odd description, but she has to admit that it somehow fits the smell. 

“Tell me about it,” Peter mutters. He rubs his hand across his eyes, wincing as the pain apparently continues, then squints at her. “Seriously, how long have you been there?” 

“Not long,” she says. Even to her own ears, it’s unconvincing. 

He raises his eyebrows and smirks. “You _were_ watching me, weren’t you? You were worried about me.”

She bristles at his tone, feels her cheeks flush. “With how buffoonish you were acting last night, it would be impossible for anyone not to be concerned.” 

He frowns, flushing. “What’d I do?”

Gamora blinks at him, wondering yet again whether he’s messing with her, bluffing to see what she’ll say. She knows, of course, that most species throughout the galaxy will experience amnesia with exposure to enough alcohol. She also knows from her nocturnal reading that Terrans are more susceptible than most (as they are with nearly all things). Still, she’s uncertain whether he actually had enough for that to be the case.

She considers carefully. “You don’t remember?”

He shrugs, wincing again. “Kinda hazy.”

“You wrestled me over drinks, for one,” says Gamora, deciding to stick with something relatively benign. 

“Sounds hot,” says Peter. Then he frowns, his blush deepening, and scratches behind his ear. “Hey, I didn’t...do anything bad, did I?”

“Bad?” asks Gamora, unsure of how to read his reaction, his sudden shame. She thinks of Knowhere and Rocket and wonders if he is too. “You didn’t start any bar fights, if that’s what you mean.”

Peter shakes his head. “No, I mean...I didn’t try to sleep with you, did I?”

“Is that often a worry for you when you drink?” she asks, unsure what to think. 

He shrugs, then seems to regret that as the movement jostles his head. He winces and says, “Well, usually when I go out and get drunk, I’m also tryna get laid. Usually I remember better, though.” 

Gamora tries not to visibly bristle at the thought, imagining him leaving their booth last night to go to the bar, flirt with anything that moves until something stuck; maybe bringing that Krylorian waitress back here to have sex. There’s no privacy on this ship, so she’d have at least heard them, would have had to see her this morning, would have had to not stab her -- 

“You were your usual obnoxious self,” she says, rather uncharitably. His look of concern only grows, so she relents, pushing away the irrational part of her that is angry at him for the images she created only in her head. “But you did not act as though you were trying to sleep with me.” 

“Good,” he says, shoulders sagging in relief. “Not that I wouldn’t, you know--” He clears his throat, takes another drink of water, bigger than she’d advise. “Just--you’re my friend.” 

For a moment her mind runs away with her again, tries to tell her that she ought to be hurt by what he’s just said. Why _shouldn’t_ he want to sleep with her? He certainly seemed to on Knowhere, and she’s pretty sure she’s seen it in other looks from him too, though he’d seemed to be trying to hide it. But now he’s telling her that that’s not true, that being friends with her somehow negates wanting sex, and she is _silver_ for someone who doesn’t even want--

“That’s ridiculous,” she hisses under her breath, and only realizes that she’s verbalized the words at all when Peter frowns at her in confusion.

“What?” He scratches his ear again.

Her blush deepens, and she mentally gropes at the familiar anger that’s her typical defense against vulnerability. “I said you’re ridiculous. We shouldn’t even need to be having this conversation if you hadn’t been so damned determined to drink yourself into a stupor.”

“I wasn’t--” he starts, defensive. “I was celebrating!” 

“That was an even poorer attempt at lying than when you said the same thing last night,” she says dryly. 

“I totally was!” he says. He smiles, such a weak facsimile of his usual charming smile that she wonders if he’s even trying. 

She raises her eyebrows, unimpressed. “Do you not recall admitting to me last night that you were drinking in order to forget something?” 

His smile fades, and he gives her an appraising look. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to hustle me or not.” 

Gamora has never been able to pull off a “hustle” in her life, the very few times she has tried. She’s always favored direct action; not that she really had a choice in the matter, with the way Thanos taught her. 

“I will leave the hustling to you,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him, concerned about the amount he’s forgetting. Apparently forgetting. “Are _you_ hustling?” 

“Wha--no,” he says, sounding genuinely taken aback. “I wouldn’t do it to you.”

“You seemed to be attempting to several times last night,” she points out. 

“Okay, I gotta have a talk with drunk-me,” he says on a sigh. He puts his head back on his pillow, looking at the ceiling in concentration. He sighs again. “I kinda remember. The details are fuzzy. But I remember talking to you. You were a really good listener.” 

“You told me about your mother,” says Gamora, deciding that he just seems entirely too vulnerable for her to continue being harsh. “How you saw her when you held the stone.”

“Oh,” says Peter, his face falling again. This time it’s not disappointment, though, just genuine sadness, the same that she saw in the bar. “Yeah. That sure was...something. Drunk me probably made it sound extra crazy, huh?”

She considers the possibility that he was hustling her _while_ he was drunk, perhaps making himself appear even more heroic and selfless for his actions in the battle. But then why tell her about his feelings of failure? Why tell her about being bullied in school, about telling pathetic lies about the identity of his father? No, that was the truth.

“How about,” says Gamora, “the next time you want to forget something, you tell it to me instead of drinking yourself into misery?”

“Yeah?” he asks, something in his face that she now recognizes as hope that he’s trying very hard to hide, and failing quite badly. 

“Yes,” she says, repressing a fond smile. “You said I’m a good listener. And that we are friends.”

“I did, didn’t I?” he says. He doesn’t seem to fight the appearance of his own smile. “Okay, then. Deal.” 

He holds his hand out, and after a second she realizes she’s supposed to shake it, so she does. His hand is warm. At first, she thinks he’s leaning his face awfully close to hers, but she’s also sitting much closer to the bed than she’d realized. It had been harder to tell when he’d been lying back. 

His hand lingers in hers, and she doesn’t pull away as fast as she’d been planning to. There’s something in his smile… It really transforms his face. Not that his face is ever unattractive, but it’s like his smile somehow heightens it. 

It’s only when that smile widens a little that she remembers how long they’ve been sitting like this and she drops his hand like it’s on fire. She scoots back considerably. 

“Good,” she says stiffly. “Now, go brush your teeth. Apparently alcohol makes Terran breath smell like a rotting Orloni.” 

Peter snorts, rubbing his hand over his face again before swinging his legs over the bed. “Ugh. Fine. I’m about to piss my pants anyway.” 

He trudges off to the bathroom, and Gamora wonders yet again why her body is betraying her for a man who says things like that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the change in rating ;)

There are lots of things about living on the Milano that drive Gamora a little bit insane.

It’s not that she’s unaccustomed to sharing space with others. Privacy has always been in very short supply, between her siblings and the handlers Thanos used to assign when she was younger. It’s refreshing, actually, to be in cramped quarters with friends rather than enemies. She’s even gone a few days without a nightmare.

Still, it has its definite downsides.

There’s Peter’s need to listen to music over the ship’s soundsystem every minute of every day, for one. She has to admit that she likes many of his songs, quite a bit more than she ever would have imagined for herself. But she still needs quiet _sometimes_ and that is never to be had around here. There’s also the fact that it makes her think of him all the time. Him and the silver that hasn’t left her abdomen in over a week. It’s like a sleeping monster he’s managed to awaken in her somehow. A dragon that’s slumbered for eons and now refuses to go back under now that it’s been roused. 

She cringes at that mental image. Peter is turning her entirely too dramatic.

Perhaps it isn’t solely Peter’s fault, though. The others are all dramatic in their own rights. Drax becomes nearly unbearable when he’s hungry and cannot immediately obtain something suitable to eat. Rocket broods for hours; not a quiet kind of brooding, but a loud, obnoxious kind. It’s all clinking metal and machinery, and small, _“completely controlled, calm down”_ explosions. 

Groot, tiny sapling that he is, can manage to be very loud when he wants to be, which is often: any rare occasion when Peter’s music is turned off, for instance, or when he’s been awoken from a nap, or when he does not _want_ to nap despite one or more of them insisting that it’s time for him to do so. 

There is only one bathroom. Their sleep schedules and habits are all varied. There are clothes and dirty dishes _everywhere_. 

Not that Gamora is complaining. She is quite fond of all of them, and her new life, despite how dangerous it all feels. But still, she’s immeasurably pleased when one of the things she’s been most irritated about is suddenly solved, when after a supply stop on Alpha Centauri, they finally obtain some decent exercise equipment for the ship.

It isn’t that Peter doesn’t work out. Far from it, in fact. He just has a very different approach to it than she does. Which, to be fair, probably comes from the fact that he’s never had to do it for survival. Or...at least not in the same way that she has. Maybe a little bit for survival, she realizes, as she remembers the way the Ravagers treated him, and the few stories he’s shared about their behavior.  
Still, at least half of his workouts seem to involve dancing, with or without the use of weights. He doesn’t appear to do any other type of cardiovascular exercises -- the one treadmill on the ship hardly turns on, and it certainly doesn’t provide any sort of challenge for her. She also hasn’t seen him running around the ship, which she’s pretty sure he would do if he was motivated, tiny space notwithstanding. 

Mainly she’s seen him lifting weights -- the largest of which is far too small for her -- and doing pushups, watching her reaction not-so-subtly from the corner of his eye.

She does her best not to give him one. But, well, he _is_ rather aesthetically pleasing. It’s not like she’s never noticed that before; she noticed it the moment they met, in a detached sort of way. It’s not like there’s anything _wrong_ with noticing that. It’s merely an observation. An observation she can’t really help making when the muscles in his arms are flexing as he lifts weights. And when he’s doing so wearing a ridiculously tight t-shirt. Or no shirt at all. 

It’s infuriating, the way he dresses when he works out. So really, that’s the only reaction he should be seeing from her: irritation. 

In lieu of proper equipment, Gamora’s been forced to do whatever exercises she can without it. This involves running in place, doing pull-ups in door frames, and a lot of stretching. She may or may not angle herself strategically during these stretches for Peter to see -- purely for revenge purposes, of course. 

But now that there’s an actual, functional treadmill, and resistance machines, and weights heavy enough to present an actual challenge for her, she’s able to go back to her full workout routine. 

And the best part is that Rocket's installed all of it to fold back into storage that's practically flush with the walls of the cargo bay, so she gets to have her equipment without losing any more precious living space. 

She changes quickly into her workout clothes -- she's picked up some new items for that, too -- though _she_ is certainly not about to go without a shirt. There might have been a time when she'd consider a crop top or even an athletic bra purely for the sake of revenge. But these days she's much more concerned with keeping her abdomen concealed, tucking the hem of her tight tank top into the waistband of her shorts. The last thing she needs is for Peter to notice the silver, to start asking questions about it. 

There's a spring in her step as she heads to the cargo bay -- but she pauses shy of the entryway. She hears Peter before she sees him, breathing hard and grunting every few seconds. 

There’s no reason for those sounds to have any effect on her. They’re just the noises he makes when he works out; the noises plenty of other people make when they work out. There’s nothing about them that should make her abdomen flush a bit deeper, or make her heart rate speed up before she’s even begun her warm-up. 

And there’s no reason for her to hesitate entering the cargo bay, either. So she takes a breath and forces herself to walk in, confident and not allowing herself to pause before she reaches the opposite wall that Peter is near. 

“Hey, Gamora!” he says, and then she has no choice but to look at him. He’s on his back on the new bench, but it’s the old barbell he’s got raised over his head; he’d evidently paused when she walked in, because it’s suspended halfway above his chest. The muscles in his arms are strained, appearing larger than normal due to the effort. There’s a light sheen of sweat on them, too. 

And of course he’s not wearing a shirt. 

“Oh,” says Gamora, attempting to feign surprise. “You’re here.” She can’t say why, and she isn’t going to think about it too hard, but it’s important to her that he doesn’t realize she’s heard him, that she’s paused to...what? Gather her courage? Restrain herself? She certainly doesn’t want him to _think_ either of those things. Or about any _things_ his presence might be doing to her body.

“Yep!” says Peter, dipping and lifting the bar again. He’s grinning despite the obvious exertion. “What, you think I got a bod like this without a little sweat?”

“That is quite a bit more than a _little_ sweat,” says Gamora, raking her eyes over him and arranging her face into an expression of careful aloofness. “And I do not make a habit of thinking about your body.”

He tries to shrug, nearly drops the weights -- which probably would have squished him like a bug -- then stabilizes the bar. He’s still grinning, apparently unperturbed by the near-disaster. “Hey, your loss.” 

She’s never going to get any actual exercise done if she just stands here bantering with Peter all day, so she shakes her head and resolutely turns away from him to focus on her warm-up. She twists her limbs this way and that, bending and stretching her body. Some of the constant discomfort she lives with eases at the familiar routine, and she lets herself relax into it.

She blocks out the noises Peter’s making as best as she can, though this isn’t a large area so it’s impossible to not hear him, even without auditory enhancements. Still, she does what she can. 

It’s not until those noises suddenly cease that she looks at him again, can’t resist turning around. She’s nearly done with her warm-up, has one of her legs pressed up against the wall in a vertical split.

When she turns to see what’s caused him to be quiet for longer than two seconds in a row, she finds that he’s staring at her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The barbell is held barely above his chest, like he was interrupted in the process of lifting it. 

“Are you all right?” asks Gamora, suddenly concerned that he's injured himself somehow. It wouldn’t be difficult to do with his comparatively fragile physiology. 

“I--holy shit,” he breathes, in a voice that she initially thinks is pained but quickly realizes is incredulity, bordering on something like awe. “Your leg is _flat._ ”

She blinks, wondering hardly for the first time whether they're having some kind of a translator issue. Those words just make no sense. “What?”

“Your leg,” he repeats, “is _flat_. Against the wall.”

Gamora turns, looks at her own legs, then shrugs. “Cybernetic skeleton. Increased flexibility.”

Peter grunts, and for a moment she thinks he's being obnoxious again, making obscene noises in response to her stretching routine. No matter what he says about them being friends, she absolutely would not put it past him. But then she turns to face him again and sees that this time he actually has lost his hold on the weights, the bar now pinning him to the bench. 

She doesn’t hesitate, drops her leg immediately and rushes over to him with an alarmed cry of, “Peter!” 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he wheezes, but he’s struggling to grip the bar again adequately enough to get it off, probably distracted by pain or panic. She’s at his side so she reaches out and lifts it off of him with no trouble. 

“I’m fine,” he repeats again, his voice sounding much less strained now that he’s free of the weights. 

“What happened?” she asks, examining him with concern. “Do you feel dizzy? Are your hands okay?”

“I’m _fine_ , Gamora, really,” he insists. He rubs a hand over his chest where the bar had fallen. She watches it, but she’s too distracted to be all that...distracted. 

“Then why did the barbell fall?” she asks. 

“It didn’t fall,” he says. He sounds almost like he’s pouting. “It slipped.”

“What’s the difference?” she asks. She’s growing less concerned, though; he sounds like his usual stubborn self. 

He shrugs, raising himself slightly so he’s leaning on one elbow, all he can manage on the narrow bench. “I dunno. Doesn’t matter. I guess this is why you’re supposed to lift weights with a spotter.”

She can’t keep the irritation out of her voice when she asks, “What’s a spotter?” She’s getting annoyed with having to ask so many questions. 

“Oh,” says Peter, rubbing his face with one hand. It’s not quite clear whether he’s wiping off sweat or just feeling awkward again. He has plenty of reason to do both, she thinks. “It’s like--someone who stands over you while you lift the weights and catches them if you lose your grip. Basically it’s their job to keep you safe.”

Gamora crosses her arms, giving him an appraising look. She’s never heard of this before, can only imagine how she or any of her siblings would have been punished for needing such a ridiculous safeguard. It would have been viewed as a sign of weakness for certain. Plus, she can think of other reasons why Peter would lie about this sort of thing. “Are you sure you don’t just want me to stand there and look at your ‘bod’? Because I am not going to do that.”

“No, no!” says Peter, flushing deeper than he already was from exertion alone. “It’s a real thing, I swear. I saw it on TV. Never really had one, though, ‘cause...Ravagers, you know. Not real big on safety.” He shrugs again, but she thinks she sees a hint of sadness in his face.

That sadness stirs something inside her, a sort of dull, aching need to make that go away. There’s also a considerable amount of anger at the Ravagers on his behalf, but she can’t do much about that emotion right now. 

She wants to do _something_ , though, something to take that sadness away, so she figures she’ll share something of her own. He often seems to feel better when she does that. “I never had a spotter, either. With Thanos. Though he, or others, would often be watching me to ensure that any signs of fatigue or weakness would be punished.” 

Peter blinks at her, appearing even sadder than before. “Oh. That’s…”

Gamora just barely restrains herself from visibly wincing, fearing that she’s said the wrong thing. Peter thankfully distracts her -- by getting distracted himself. 

“Well, hey,” he starts to say, but then he cuts himself off as his eyes have drifted somewhere down, his eyes widening for the third time in about a minute. 

She follows his gaze to see that what he’s fixated on this time is the barbell she’d removed from his chest, which she’s still holding in one hand, casually at her side. She’d almost forgotten it was there. 

“Oh,” says Gamora, lifting it to look at it. “Did you want it back?” It’s light to her touch, barely more exertion in holding it than in holding a book or a plate. She can’t imagine using it to work out, and seeing how helpless he’d been under it gives her yet another unpleasant reminder of how fragile his body is. 

“You--” He’s still gaping, making her momentarily concerned that he actually has managed to injure himself with the weights, that perhaps he’s having trouble breathing right now. “Holy _shit_ , Gamora!”

“What?” she asks, her apprehension growing. “Are you in pain?”

“You--” he repeats, now pointing at the weight in her hand. “You’re just--You just gestured with it! Like it weighs nothing!”

Gamora feels a surge of irritation as she realizes that’s what he’s been gaping at like a damn fish. Ordinarly she thinks she would be proud of having that effect on him, or anyone really. But the fact that he’s actually scared her yet again undercuts any sense of pride or pleasure, leaving her only irritated. 

“Well yes,” she says coolly. “As I have told you, I am a good deal stronger than you are.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, still staring in amazement. “But I didn’t realize you meant _that_ much stronger! Holy hell. I bet you could lift the whole Milano over your head with one finger!” 

“I definitely could not,” she says, though she’s pretty sure he’s aware of that. 

He doesn’t respond to that, too busy scrambling to sit up and get off the bench, so quickly she’s afraid he’s going to trip over himself or get otherwise injured again. But he doesn’t. He’s standing there on the opposite side of the bench from her, a little breathless. 

“Screw it,” he says, a smile on his face. “I’m done, it’s your turn!”

She blinks. “What? Why? I thought you said you weren’t done.”

“Well first of all,” he says, hand against his chest. “I’m a little embarrassed that I’ve been working out with what’s basically a stick to you. But mostly I just wanna see how much you can lift!” 

Gamora purses her lips, unsure how she feels about that. Not wanting to answer right away, she says instead, “There’s no reason to be embarrassed. Not about that, anyway. You can’t help that your species is not that strong.” 

“How strong would you be without the mods?” asks Peter.

It ought to be a completely inappropriate question -- _is_ a completely inappropriate question. It reminds her of all the men who have tried to sleep with her, who have seen her as exotic, a curiosity to be experienced. She ought to be angry at him for asking it, and yet she isn’t. There’s something almost painfully genuine about his tone, that damn vulnerability in his face again. She wonders if that’s the real secret to his hustle -- that _thing_ that tugs at some part of her that wants to take care of him, wants to protect him. It’s dangerous, she thinks, and yet here she is, a willing victim.

“I don’t know,” she says after a moment. “I don’t -- Remember much about my people.” That’s true, on the whole, though she knows more about some things than others. Like the silver.

Peter nods. “Yeah, that’s fair. But like...do you know how much you could lift or anything? Before?”

Gamora sighs. “I was a child when Thanos began training and modifying me. I believe I was with him for a few weeks when I had my first procedure.”

“Jesus,” he breathes. His eyes are wide again, but this time it’s horror in them, not amazement. She bristles, her skin crawling at the idea that she’s horrifying to him, but he continues, “That dude is a sicko.” 

She relaxes, just slightly. She’s never heard that term before but it’s not hard to gather the meaning from context. “Yes.” 

“Well, I bet you were super strong before too,” he says confidently. 

“You can’t know that,” she says. “I don’t remember.” 

“Exactly.” Peter shrugs, unconcerned. “If you can’t know the real answer, might as well go with a made-up one.” 

“But—“ 

“Hey, are you gonna exercise or not?” he asks, eagerness in his voice and expression poorly masked. “I’m here, spotting an empty bench. This isn’t gonna give either of us much of a workout.” 

She hesitates. She is itching to exercise, to try out these new weights; and there’s a part of her that she’s having increased difficulty silencing lately that wants Peter to see just how strong she is. It’s that part that concerns her. 

“ _Spotting_ me will not give you any workout,” she points out. 

He waves his hand dismissively. “We’re taking turns. I’ll go after you.” 

“The bench is drenched in your sweat,” she says, definitely just stalling now. 

“Oh!” says Peter, apparently _not_ realizing that she’s stalling, or at least not calling her out on it if he does. “Right! That’s gross.” He smacks his palm lightly against his forehead as if scolding himself. “Gross, me.”

He glances around the room for a moment, then his eyes light up. He half-jogs across the room to grab a pile of fabric that she identifies belatedly as his discarded t-shirt. He looks at it for a moment, sniffs it, then comes back over and uses the shirt to wipe off the bench. Tossing the shirt into the corner again, Peter does a little half-bow and flourish, gesturing to the bench. “M’lady, your workout palace awaits you.”

Gamora blinks at him, aware and irritated yet again that he’s making a reference she doesn’t understand. Perhaps she could use some of Drax’s reflexes to begin catching them. “What did you call me?”

He frowns, as if it takes him a beat to remember his own words, which is probably what happens when one talks without thinking at all. “Oh! M’lady! That’s like…a word you use for a princess. Or a queen! Queen of kicking ass.”

“I have never wished to be royalty,” she says flatly. The term makes her think of thrones, which is enough of a negative association for the entire idea to leave bad taste in her mouth. “Though I do enjoy _kicking ass_ , as you’ve called it.” 

Peter grins. “Then the title applies! _So_ \--” He doesn’t finish, just gestures grandly to the bench yet again, expectant. 

She looks between it and him, unable to come up with any more ways to delay this other than outright saying _no_ , which, hesitant though she is, she doesn’t want to do. 

“Fine,” she sighs. “But I’m going to need an actual challenge.” She sets the barbell down, resisting the urge to toss it towards the rest of the equipment in order to further demonstrate her strength; a stupid, pointless urge she decides she blames entirely on Peter. 

“You could lift me,” he suggests, moving his eyebrows up and down very quickly, his grin turning somewhat lecherous. A week ago she would have bristled at that, but she’s quickly coming to recognize that as a joking type of expression. Though she has no doubt that he would be perfectly willing to follow through with the suggestion if she were as well. 

“All right,” says Gamora, just to see what he’ll do. She rests her hands on her hips, regarding him with a hint of a challenge in her gaze. 

Peter’s jaw drops into that fish-faced gape again, and this time it’s entirely gratifying. Then he closes it again and shakes himself, like he’s trying to clear actual cobwebs out of his head. A little bit of sweat flies off his hair, and his curls bounce maddeningly. “What, _really_?”

“No,” says Gamora, smirking. She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, just picks up the new weights they’ve acquired and sits on the edge of the bench with them. They’re much higher-tech than the plain metal ones Peter were just using. This set interacts with the artificial gravity of the ship, making themselves as light or heavy as the user specifies. She starts with their medium setting, which she estimates is probably slightly more than he weighs. The weights hum to life, projecting an image in accordance with her choice, simulating the mass they would have if they were solid metal.

When she glances back up at Peter, he’s pouting, apparently over his shock. “Aaw, why not?” he asks. “I’d hold real still.” 

She raises her eyebrows, then picks up the weight with one hand. “Because lifting you would hardly be a workout.” She sets the bar down again and reprograms it so that she’ll at least require two hands in order to lift it, though it’s nowhere near as heavy as she could actually lift. She needs to start out with more of a warm-up, especially since she hasn’t had the chance to lift weights in over a week. 

“Okay,” Peter says, a finger to his lips in a thoughtful gestures. “What if you bench press me while I’m holding weights!” 

“What if I bench press the weights that we procured specifically for this purpose?” she counters. 

He’s still pouting, but he shrugs. “Yeah, all right, if you wanna make sense. I guess it would be hard for me to spot you if I’m the one being lifted.”

“That would make it difficult,” she agrees. The image of picking Peter up and raising him above her head is an oddly pleasing one, both amusing and arousing for some reason. She snuffs that thought out, angry with herself for having it, and finally lies back on the bench if only for something to do, some way to distract herself. It doesn’t really help, though, since that leaves her looking up at a still-shirtless Peter standing over her. 

She adjusts her shorts to make sure her shirt stays securely tucked in. 

“Hey,” says Peter, noticing. “If you wanna lose your shirt too, I won’t complain. Gender equality and stuff.”

Gamora wrinkles her nose. “You are disgusting.”

“Yep!” he says brightly, sounding almost proud. He takes a step closer and puts a hand lightly on the bar between hers. “I’ll spot! This is exactly how we did it in gym class!”

“Peter,” she sighs, rolling her eyes at him. “I do not require a ‘spotter.’ I am not going to drop the weights.”

“You might,” says Peter. “That’s the thing about spotters! You never know you need ‘em til you need ‘em. I just learned that, like five minutes ago.”

“Imagine that,” she deadpans. “But you would not be able to lift this weight if my life depended on it. So it is entirely pointless.”

“Hey now!” he insists. “I’m not as puny as you think! Lemme try!” He plants his other hand on the bar too and throws all his strength into it. The effect is miniscule, the shift barely perceptible to her in terms of how much weight she’s still supporting. She would think he was joking, perhaps not trying hard at all, were it not for the way his face is twisted with effort, even more sweat beading up on his brow. 

“Peter, you’re going to hurt yourself,” she says mildly, expecting him to laugh and give up, but he doesn’t. 

“I almost got it!” he says, his voice as strained as his expression. The growing color on his face alarms her. 

“ _Peter_ ,” she says almost harshly. She’s truly afraid he’s going to pull a muscle, at minimum, because he’s too stubborn to admit the weight is too heavy for him. 

“Okay, okay,” he says, finally letting go. He’s panting, red in the face. “So maybe that’s a little heavier than I’m...great at lifting. But if I had to, I could totally get it off you.” 

Untrue. But she elects not to point that out, as she’s sure he knows that. “I appreciate the thought. But if the weights actually fell on me, you should get Drax to lift them off.” 

“Drax isn’t _that_ strong,” Peter mumbles petulantly. “But fine. I guess that’s also something a spotter can do; getting someone to help with getting the bar off.” 

Not knowing what else to say to that, she elects to finally settle back on the bench more, lying down and positioning herself under the barbell. She finds Peter to be frustratingly distracting in this position, though, standing over her like he is, still sans shirt. 

Arranging her face into an expression of defiance, she meets his gaze and holds it for a long moment. She isn’t sure whether she’s trying to intimidate or antagonize him -- but it doesn’t matter, because he’s not going for either of those. Instead he just keeps grinning, arching an eyebrow eagerly at her.

“C’mon,” he says warmly, then pauses, seeming to reconsider. “Wait. Am I weirding you out? Like...standing here watching? Would you rather I let you work out in private? ‘Cause I’ll totally do that if you’d rather. Just say the word.”

She thinks about that for a moment, surprised by his consideration. Having an audience _is_ part of her discomfort, she realizes. She is accustomed to being watched, evaluated. Both by Thanos (or his agents) and her siblings. Observing one another in the gym was one of the prime ways to strategize how to cripple or even kill a rival. She feels none of that from Peter, of course….and yet she is still oddly self-conscious.

She doesn’t especially want to share any of that, particularly not when she’s mad at herself for feeling these things in the first place. It’s ridiculous; Peter is not going to try to hurt her. He’s the furthest thing from her siblings there is. And the very fact that he’s extended this consideration has eased her discomfort somewhat. 

Without consciously deciding to, she says, “No. It’s fine.” Then she makes herself grip the barbell and lift it off its stand again, feeling the satisfying weight in her hands as she lowers it to her chest, then raises it back above her head. She’s determined to act normal about this, to not give away the irritating mix of feelings roiling inside her. 

“I am just concerned that you may get bored,” she says as casually as she can, “since I’m going to have no need for a spotter.” Though with the way his eyes are following the movement of the weights and, if she’s not mistaken, her arms as well, he’s not going to get bored any time soon. 

“Uh--nothing to worry about there,” he says. The casual tone in his voice doesn’t sound much more convincing than hers. “I always find some way to entertain myself!” 

“You do seem to entertain yourself an awful lot,” she says, dipping the barbell, then lifting it again. 

She doesn’t exactly mean it to be a compliment, but he takes it as one anyway, because of course he does. 

“Thanks!” he says brightly, grinning. “I’m awesome at entertainment.”

“Clearly,” says Gamora, continuing with the weights. Her muscles are starting to warm up now, the familiar flush of endorphins spreading through her. It’s hard to continue feeling self-conscious now, though she knows he’s still watching her. 

“Hey, I know!” he exclaims, loudly and suddenly enough to get her attention. 

“What?” she asks.

“We need music!”

“Do we?” she asks, though it’s not really a question. Peter’s already running the short distance between here and the wall, to where his Walkman is sitting on a box. 

“Of course!” he exclaims, fiddling with it. “I can’t believe it took me this long to realize. We should’ve had tunes the whole time!” 

She doesn’t respond, just listens as the first, upbeat strains of one of the songs from the new mix begins playing. It’s the one about the sailors, whatever those are. She hasn’t asked, and doesn’t know if she will. Just another reference that she doesn’t want to admit goes over her head. 

When Peter’s finished adjusting the volume, he dances back to her slowly. His hips move back and forth, his arms too, in a way that’s entirely too distracting and threatens to make the rhythm of her workout falter. It’s only intense concentration and years of routine that keep the weights rising and falling. 

“Damn,” he says, when he’s made it back to his previous position too close to her. His hips are still swaying to the beat, though less so, and he’s watching the progress of the barbell again. “Is that even an effort to you?”

“Yes,” she says. “It would be pointless otherwise. Though it is the warm-up weight.” 

“So you’re gonna make it heavier?” he asks, as though he has no idea how a warm-up works. Then again, she could believe that. Peter is probably the sort of person who neither stretches nor warms up. He is probably so impatient and so cocky that he jumps straight into maximum exercise mode right away. Which is concerning, really, given how fragile his body is. Then again, she’s pretty certain the Ravagers never trained him in proper exercise technique.

“Yes,” says Gamora, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt. “That is how a warm-up works. You start with something relatively easy so that your body becomes activated, and then--”

“I know, I know,” Peter interrupts, making her irritation flare again. So much for the benefit of the doubt. “I just--you’re gonna make it _heavier_. Holy shit. It’s gonna weigh more than I do.”

“It already does,” says Gamora, holding the barbell with one hand as she adjusts its setting with the other. She’s tempted to put it immediately up to its maximum just to spite him, but that is not proper technique. She goes up only a couple of steps instead. “That is why I said that lifting you would not be good exercise.”

His eyes widen as the number goes up. “Yeah, wow, okay...I see your point… Holy shit, you’re strong.” 

Even though she knows this, for some reason hearing Peter say it like that makes a strange warmth flood through her; she feels it most strongly in her cheeks and her abdomen, but it’s also an emotional sensation, one she’s not used to. 

“I am aware of that, yes,” she says as evenly as she can, doing her best to ignore all of that. “I would not have survived past the age of ten if I wasn’t.” 

“Well, that part sucks,” he says. “But at least you got some badass super strength out of it.” 

She doesn’t know what to say to that, and finds she’s too distracted to try to think of an answer anyway. Peter is still watching the way she lifts the weights, and her own disobedient eyes have strayed to his arms yet again. He’s got them crossed over his chest, and she can’t help but notice the way that makes them appear larger, the way they seem to gleam with the sweat that hasn’t dried yet. 

She definitely feels warmer than she should. Despite her best efforts to shove all of this down -- all the feelings he causes in her, the thoughts she can’t suppress -- they have so far remained stubbornly on the surface. 

This is going to be a long workout.

* * *

Peter comes to her in the middle of the night. 

The others are asleep, she knows, but he isn’t and neither is she.

She’s lying on her bunk on top of the covers, staring at the bulkhead above her. She knows that he’s coming before she can see or even hear him, is oddly aware of his presence as though somehow they are connected on a level that goes beyond the physical. Her heart beats faster as he draws nearer, and then she can hear that it’s nearly in tandem with his.

Gamora raises her head a bit as the mattress dips with his weight, taking him in. He’s wearing a soft grey t-shirt, the kind of old threadbare fabric she can practically feel under her fingertips just by looking. He’s also wearing black boxer shorts, and she finds her eyes drawn to the sparse blond hairs on his thighs, somehow even finer than the ones on his head. She wants to touch them, wants to feel the way she knows he’ll shiver if she does.

She doesn’t though, at least not right away. She’s too focused on his arms, her hands drifting towards them like they’re drawn by magnets. Her hands curl around his biceps, feeling both skin and the material of his shirt, noting the softness of each, the hardness of his muscles beneath. 

She only contemplates for a moment before she tugs on him, using her grip on his arms to pull him over her so his body is pressed against hers, sandwiching her between him and the bed. His face is right above hers now, the look in his eyes driving her nearly as wild as the weight of him above her. She’s warm, so warm; somehow it’s unbearable but not unpleasant. 

Suddenly the desire to kiss him, to finally feel his lips on her, is overwhelming, nearly suffocating in its intensity. She’s sure she’ll explode if she doesn’t get to soon. 

As if reading her mind, Peter lowers his head and then his lips are on hers and it’s _fire_ , she’s on fire and it’s the best thing she’s ever felt. She grips his shoulders, runs her hands over his back, the muscles there pulling, contracting, twitching under her fingers. 

Peter’s hand drifts to the hem of her shirt, then underneath to touch her abdomen, right at the place where the fire is concentrated, where she’s sure she’s glowing so bright silver that it’s blinding. She only gets brighter under his hand, he’s basically stroking the fire. She’s got no need to hide this, no reason to, and she doesn’t _want_ to. She wants him to see and feel this, to know what he does to her, how much she -- 

Gamora wakes with a gasp, sitting up so quickly that she bumps her head on the top of the bulkhead. She curses softly and runs her fingers through her hair, rubbing the spot. She’s bothered more by the utter stupidity of it than anything resembling actual pain. 

She’s drenched in sweat, she realizes, as though she’s worked it up by acting on the instincts in her dream. Her heart is pounding even faster than it was in her mind’s eye, her abdomen so flushed it’s almost painful. For a moment she acts on impulse, running her hand down over it, feeling the hot skin, and then slipping lower. She lets her fingers slide between her legs, bites her lip at the sensation, at the pleasure she so seldom allows herself. It would be easy to indulge herself now, to lose herself in the fantasy, and--

In his bunk, a few feet away, Peter makes a snuffling snoring noise, shattering her thoughts. Gamora pulls her hand away as if she’s been burned, suddenly acutely aware that she is surrounded by the others, that they are _so close_ to her, that even though her bunk is obscured by the opaque privacy forcefield, they really are not that far from all sleeping in the same open room. 

And it isn’t just their proximity, either. It’s the fact that it’s Peter -- foolish, ridiculous, relentless _Peter_ who’s made her silver, who’s made her want him this badly. 

Shoving the images of the dream away, she turns over so that her face is buried in her pillow. That way it’s easier to suppress the tears that are suddenly stinging in her eyes and the frustrated scream that’s trying to crawl its way up her throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We didn't exactly plan for Gamora's imagination to cause a jump in rating but here we are


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry we skipped a week! Should be back to weekly updating now! :)

Peter continues to haunt her in her sleep. The dreams plague her like her subconscious is attempting to punish her. Maybe it is. 

The Peter in her waking life isn’t doing much to help the situation. It’s difficult enough to see him at all after dreaming about him in such a manner; it’s infinitely worse to see him shirtless, as he seems determined to be as often as possible. She begins to wonder whether he’s taking cues from Drax. Half the time, his exercise routine takes place with no shirt, and he changes shirts in her field of vision frequently. And the shirts he _does_ wear are hardly better, so skin tight they appear nearly painted on. 

She doesn’t know whether this Peter or dream Peter is tormenting her worse. 

Only two nights after her first dream, she has nearly the same dream again, only it goes further this time. Peter’s removed all of her clothing and most of his by the time she wakes up, gasping and sweating. That afternoon, she catches Peter doing pull-ups in a skin-tight tank top. 

Later in the week, she sees him exit the bathroom dripping wet, nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. That night she dreams of joining him in the shower. 

In the dream, she goes into the bathroom at the sound of the water, knows full well what she’s doing. She sees Peter from behind first, the water spilling down his back, plastering his curls to his head the same way it did in the pool. It’s also making little rivulets down his back, down the contours of the muscles she doesn’t want to have memorized, the dip where his back becomes his waist and then his ass. She can picture that too because she’s practically seen it through his boxer shorts. Seen the shape of it, at least.

She takes him in gradually and all at once, realizes in slow motion that one of his hands is moving, arm pumping up and down. It only takes another beat for her to realize that he is touching himself, like she has found herself wanting to after every one of these dreams. Like he’s joked about offhandedly before. Only now he’s doing it while thinking of _her,_ she somehow knows.

In the dream, she casts off the robe she’s wearing, the same one that she wore to the hotel pool. She does it in the same way too, a quick, confident motion that sends it to the floor in a heap. In the dream, Peter turns --

\-- and she wakes with a now-familiar gasp.

She presses her lips together and narrowly contains the urge to punch her pillow. She uses it instead to cover her face and muffle a frustrated grunt into it, tossing her head back against the mattress. 

She presses her thighs together and pants into the pillow, trying desperately to tamp down on the urge to slide her hand down, to take care of the rampant arousal she can’t seem to control. The others are all asleep on the same ship, with no barriers but a visual privacy shield. She couldn’t...could she? 

She tosses the pillow aside and sits up rapidly before she can act on any urges. She knows, though she’d like to be able to deny it, who she’d be thinking of if she did. And that is not something she wants to deal with. 

She disengages the privacy shield and marches to the bathroom, despite it being the site of her latest dream. When she gets there, she closes the door and debates for a moment whether to splash cold water on her face or dismantle the shower piece by piece, as if that could do anything to control her dreams. 

The water cools her face but doesn’t do much else. Still, it is a slight improvement. 

Spending the rest of the night pummeling the new punching bag they’d installed in the cargo bay is more of an improvement, but not by much. 

She pays for it the the next night, of course. Her brain is far too cruel to allow her any amount of peace. She’d probably ought to just accept that, but instead she is an idiot who continues to be surprised by the new and exciting ways her subconscious finds to mock her.

She’s in the gym again in her dream, in the middle of the night. The lights are low, just enough for her to get around. She’s finished with the punching bag, her heart beating quickly, her muscles warm and singing with endorphins. She ought to go back to her bunk, ought to force herself to sleep, but she’s far too revved up now.

Instead, she makes her way to the weight bench again, stretches out on it, the flat surface cool against the hot skin of her back. All at once, that makes her realize that she’s naked, looking down at the silver on her abdomen as she prepares to pick up the barbell. She ought to be horrified, ought to abandon the workout immediately, but somehow it seems only fitting.

Then Peter appears. Not from the entrance, but from right next to her, as if he’s been there the entire time. He’s shirtless but still wearing pants, the same pants she’d seen him work out in before. Still, she’s somehow not horrified at her nude state, at Peter seeing her this way; she feels only excitement; anticipation; arousal. 

He asks if she needs a spotter and she doesn’t answer in words, just sits up and grabs him by the hips to pull him even closer. He’s looking down at her with a dark, lustful gleam in his eyes that only excites her more. She grabs the top of his pants and begins to slowly pull them down, eyes following the trail of hair that begins at his navel and disappears into his waistband, more and more of it revealing itself until -- 

She wakes just as his pants slide over his hips. 

Her dreams continue in that vein for a while; long enough that when she finally deciphers the pattern, she’s angry at herself both for its existence and for not recognizing it sooner.

She always wakes up just before he gets all of his clothes off, just before they can act on the desires that have clearly been awakened in the old, animalistic part of her brain. Before she can see the most intimate, vulnerable parts of him.

And that’s the real block, isn’t it? The reason her subconscious can’t continue to run with the fantasy. She _doesn’t know_ what his...genitalia look like. She wrinkles her nose up at the bulkhead above her bunk as she thinks the word. His _genitalia_ are the _last_ thing she wants to be pondering, and yet here she is doing just that. 

She does not know what Terran genitalia look like. Hell, she doesn’t even know what the males of her own people look like in the nude. She doesn’t remember-- if she ever knew-- and she’s chosen not to find out. 

Now she has another choice: to find out what Peter might look like there….or not. On the one hand, she thinks, having the knowledge would be strangely intimate, almost like a violation. On the other hand, perhaps it would make the dreams finally stop.

“Damn it,” she murmurs, sitting up in her bunk. Then she freezes for a long moment, scanning the ship for any sounds that might indicate one of the others is awake, or might have heard her. When she hears nothing, she leans over to the storage beneath her bed, fishing out her holo.

She lies there with her fingers hovering over the holo, she’s not sure for how long. She hesitates first on whether she should go through with this after all, then on how to phrase the search. She’s not after porn or anything else lewd; just the thought of that feels more like a violation than her dreams. Still, she lies there paranoid, listening for any signs that Peter might be awake, unreasonably afraid that he’s somehow going to know what she’s about to do. What she’s alternately attempting to convince herself to do and not do. 

Letting out another frustrated noise, she forces her hands to action. If this has any chance of helping with these damn dreams, it’s worth it. She takes a breath and types _Terran anatomy_ into the device, waiting with bated breath for the milliseconds it takes for the results to appear. 

There isn’t much. Her search garners only a few results. She clicks on the first one to reveal long pages of dense text about the anatomy of various Terran plants and animals, which is unhelpful. She practically punches the back icon and clicks on the second link. 

She feels both relief and even more tension when this proves much more fruitful.

It’s a diagram with a few basic, but fairly reastlic as far as she can tell, 3D models of nude Terrans. She clicks on the male image to enlarge it before she can change her mind. 

She feels her cheeks flush instantly, as if the temperature on the ship has suddenly risen incredibly fast. Perhaps there is a fire in one of the engines, she thinks. Perhaps they are all about to be blown apart into space debris. 

If only she could get so lucky.

Instead, the ship fails to explode and she finds herself staring at a hologram of a naked male Terran, forced to admit that the heat is all her own reaction, all coming from within her body. 

She stares up at the Terran’s head, examining his hair (blond but straight) and face (pleasant, but not as attractive as Peter’s). The muscles in his chest are defined, but not as defined as Peter’s, and his shoulders are less broad. Perhaps Peter _is_ a particularly notable…specimen of his race, she thinks, not for the first time. Perhaps, weak though he may be in comparison with most other races, he is very strong for a Terran.

Also, she realizes, she is stalling. 

It isn’t that she’s a prude, really. She does not _disapprove_ of sexual things, does not view them as shameful or wrong. It’s just that she has never had much particular interest in them. Or much particular experience, aside from killing the men who have dared see her as some sort of conquest.

Finally, there isn’t much she can use to stall unless she starts counting the fingers and toes of the diagram, so she bites the bullet and lets herself look at the one area of Terran anatomy she’d been unfamiliar with up until now. The way Peter walks around half-dressed so frequently, this had been the only thing left up to her imagination. 

It’s not a surprise, really, when she finally looks. She may not have much experience, but she’s seen enough nudity throughout the galaxy to know that Terrans aren’t much different from most other humanoid species. 

A sharp feeling of relief and excitement floods her when she realizes that, because that means that she and Peter would be physically capable of -- 

She practically growls at herself in an attempt to stop that train of thought, which isn’t really successful. Because that question, she’s forced to admit to herself, is the real reason she’d been so curious, why her dreams have always stopped before this part: she didn’t know whether they would be compatible. She’d half-hoped they wouldn’t be so she could get rid of these damn fantasies, but she suspects she wouldn’t have had much luck there anyway. 

At that thought, her eyes drift back to the diagram again, but she only half-sees it this time. Now she’s picturing Peter again, wondering if the hair between his legs is the same wiry gold that she’s seen on his thighs. She wonders what it would be like with beads of water from the shower running through it, what the texture would be like to put her fingers in. Then she wonders about his...genitalia is the only word that she can muster to mind, though it feels wrong, ridiculously impersonal to the point that she almost laughs. 

She is wondering about his _dick_ , she thinks, rolling the word around in her mind, trying it out in silence because she doesn’t dare speak it (or anything else) aloud. She remembers suddenly that that’s how he’d described himself to the Nova Corps -- or, he’s described that in reverse, really.

_Not one hundred percent a dick,_ she thinks, and then comes dangerously close to laughing out loud, because she one hundred percent _is_ thinking about his dick. She is wondering whether it is also exceptional for a Terran.

But it doesn’t matter at all, because she’s never going to find out because she’s never going to sleep with him, no matter what her traitorous dreams, and body, might think she wants. He’s her friend, who happens to be attractive, who happens to be the only person she’s ever been attracted to. No big deal. Hopefully now that the mystery is resolved, at least to the point that she can--and will, she can’t deny--picture what Peter looks like fully naked, she’ll be able to stop fixating on him. Maybe it was just the unknown of it all. Yes. 

She has so little confidence in that hope that she doesn’t even want to try sleeping again. So she powers off her holo after one more--too long--look, stows it back under her bed, and marches back to the cargo bay to take out her frustrations on some innocent exercise equipment. 

She does her best to act normal around him the next day, despite the direction her thoughts continue to take regardless of her best efforts to steer them away. She thinks she does fairly well, considering all the strange feelings that course through her every time she looks at him.

The first time she sees him is on her way back from the cargo bay, tired and sore after her night of frustrated, sleepless exercise. It isn’t even the exertion that has her muscles aching so much as the tension she just can’t seem to shake. Not even an hour on the punching bag was enough to do that. And it _definitely_ doesn’t help that she happens to be walking by Peter’s bunk right as he deactivates the privacy field, leaving him blinking blearily up at her.

“Hey G’mora,” he drawls, then yawns widely in her face. 

“Hey,” she echoes, wrinkling her nose and trying to convince herself that she can smell his breath again. She can’t -- he’s notably more hygienic when he hasn’t passed out drunk -- and somehow that is annoying on this particular occasion.

“You’re up early,” he says idly, scratching his head and then somewhere...lower on his body. She refuses to follow the movement of his hand, refuses to see the boxers that he’s wearing to sleep in. Her cheeks are already heating up as she remembers the Terran model, remembers her thoughts about his....no. She does _not_ need to be examining his shorts for anything she might be able to discern about his anatomy. 

“Working out,” says Gamora, and then regrets it. She’s already wishing she could go and pummel the bag some more, but now she won’t be able to do that without answering a bunch of curious or concerned questions from him.

“Damn, you’re dedicated,” he mutters. He sits up fully and stretches, arms high above his head as he yawns again. The position makes his chest stick out a bit, his abs more pronounced, 

In a fit of what she’s choosing to call fury at his--his _Peterness_ , she practically snaps, “I’m going to shower,” and marches away from him and into the bathroom. 

She can still hear him say, “Uh, okay,” but not until after she’s slammed the door behind her. He sounds confused and still tired, his voice deeper than it is when he’s fully awake, an almost hoarse quality to it that intrigues her for no reason she can discern. 

She turns the shower on as cold as it will go, relishing the distraction and the punishment the cold rains down on her. 

That night, she’s afraid to go to sleep. She puts it off as long as she can, even working out again after the others have all gone to bed. If she can push herself into such a state of exhaustion that she can’t even _think_ anymore, then maybe she won’t be able to dream either. 

She’s dimly aware that she ought to be grateful for these dreams in comparison to the usual nightmares that have have plagued her for the last two decades, of various real and imagined horrors that have been visited upon her by Thanos. But those at least she knows how to deal with. 

These dreams are new and terrifying in a completely different way. 

Finally, so tired she can’t go on any longer, and out of suitable excuses anyway, she drags herself to her bed and nearly collapses onto it. 

It takes her no time at all to fall asleep, which turns out to be both a blessing and a curse.

This time in the dream, they aren’t on the ship. Even in sleep, in fantasy, she finds herself momentarily disoriented. She is standing by the hot tub -- Jacuzzi, says Peter’s voice in her memory -- on Xandar. But it isn’t quite the same, because the walls are much closer, the rest of the pool area gone. The lights are dimmer, too. It feels private. Intimate.

Peter is already in the water, she sees, sprawled across one of the submerged seats. He’s got his head thrown back, his eyes closed in an expression of pure bliss that probably has something to do with the jets. That position gives her ample opportunity to take in his body. The solid broadness of his shoulders catches her attention again, then the swell of his collarbone. There’s a sparse patch of curls on his chest, and she finds herself wondering how it would feel under her fingers. Then she lets her eyes skim lower, over his abs, and finally down to the thin shorts he’s chosen to wear into the water.

They’ve gone transparent, of course, because her brain is as adept at tormenting her as Thanos.

The Gamora in her dreams has no qualms about studying Peter’s every feature, including--especially--those revealed by his clinging, transparent shorts. All of him is visible despite the roiling of the water caused by the jets. When she wakes, she won’t be surprised when she realizes her subconscious used the model to fill in that part of Peter she’s never seen, but right now, all her dream self feels is desire, a hot, bubbly desire. 

She similarly has no qualms about stepping into the Jacuzzi with him, letting the water climb up her shins, her hips, the bright warmth of her abdomen, her chest; she’s naked, she realizes suddenly, without a care. She walks right up to Peter, undeterred by the almost violent pulsing of the jets. 

He’s still sitting with his head tossed back, and only looks up when she’s paused inches from him. When he lifts his head and opens his eyes, he looks at her with the same open-mouthed awe that he did when he saw her in a bathing suit. 

She doesn’t give him much time to look, though, instantly closing those inches between them and settling herself on his lap. Her hands run all over his shoulders and arms, her body presses up against him as close as they can get, and she kisses him like she’s done it a thousand times, like she has every right to. 

Peter groans against her lips, a guttural, needy sound. It reminds her of so many others she’s heard him make in decidedly more innocent circumstances, yet this one sends a dagger of heat straight through her core. It’s so much stronger than anything she has ever felt before that it’s almost scary. It makes her gasp, makes her rock back a bit on his lap and catch her breath.

He catches her, steadies her with a hand at the small of her back, gently tracing his fingers up the curve of her spine. His touch is equal parts light, warm, and soothing, almost reverent. There is nothing overtly sexual about it and yet it’s the most intimate thing she has ever felt, only serves to make her want him more.

“You okay?” he asks, bringing his hand around to cup her jaw, thumb tracing over her cheek now. The pad of his finger is warm too, and impossibly soft despite the calluses on it. Even in the dream she is aware enough to register that nobody touches her like this, nobody is this gentle.

“No,” she murmurs, and kisses him again, deeper this time.

She gets lost in it, a haze of lust seeming to manifest around them, like steam rising off the water and surrounding them. She can’t see anything but him even when her eyes open for a few seconds between kisses. Everything is Peter; his mouth, his body, his hands; his hands are _everywhere_ all at once, leaving a trail of fire on every part of her body he touches even though she’s submerged in water. 

She feels more like she’s surrounded by him than by water or steam. She’s touching him everywhere she can too, rocking against him, feeling him underneath her, until finally she feels like she’s going to explode if she doesn’t get to the point _right now_. 

His shorts cling to him but somehow give no resistance when she tugs them off. When she wraps her hand around him at last, finally feels the heat and the hardness of him, he lets out a grunt against her lips; Gamora doesn’t know if it’s that or the feel of him or all of this together that makes her moan, but dream-Peter is _very_ into it, judging by the way he takes her hips in his hands and pulls her even closer. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, a curse she’s heard him utter so many times, but it’s never made her feel like this before. 

“Okay,” she says. She lifts her hips up with Peter’s help and then they’re lining her up, he’s sliding inside her and stars burst into life behind her eyelids. 

It’s a shock when she opens her eyes into darkness, the now too-familiar bulkhead momentarily disorienting. It’s not as if she was ever unaware that it was a dream -- Had it felt real at any point, she would have put an end to it immediately. And yet having it ripped away so suddenly and completely feels like a gut punch, her entire body throbbing with arousal and also...also something that might be loneliness. 

She wants to scream into her pillow, wants to rip it and the sheets and the mattress to shreds, then perhaps set those on fire. She considers that and various other forms of violence, and finds herself sitting up, legs thrown over the bed before she’s even realized what she’s doing.

Gamora considers going to the cargo bay again, trying to work off the frustration, but she can still feel the fatigue in her muscles, knows she’ll be asking for a different sort of vulnerability if she works the organic parts of her body much harder. Instead she gets up, takes herself to the bathroom and douses her face in cold water until she’s shivering despite the adrenaline still pounding through her veins.

Feeling almost trapped on the ship, she starts back toward her bunk -- then freezes at the sound of a soft groan coming from Peter’s, so reminiscent of the sound he made in her dream that for an instant she wonders whether she’s actually awake.

She stands there frozen, staring at the privacy partition, heart pounding. She’s pretty confident she’s awake; all of this _feels_ real, not like the almost hazy quality of most of her dreams lately, but that _noise_. 

He makes it again, softer this time, accompanied by the rustling of sheets; rolling over in his sleep, probably. He must be dreaming too. Judging by the sounds, she has to wonder if he’s having the same kind of dream that’s been plaguing her. She tries to banish that thought, because even if he is, it’s not like she’d necessarily be the other person in it. He makes it no secret that he finds her physically attractive, but it’s far more likely to be one of the many, many people he’s actually had sex with. 

She doesn’t know which possibility is worse. 

At some point during this train of thought, the noises coming from Peter’s bunk cease, until she hears a noise that sounds distinctly more awake: a loud, exasperated sigh. 

That must be him waking up, and she realizes with a jolt of horror that she’s standing very close to his bunk, just staring at it. She needs to get away from there before Peter opens the partition and once again finds her standing next to his bed as he’s waking up. 

She takes a split second to consider the options. There’s only two directions she can go. To get back to her own bunk would mean crossing even farther in front of his, risking more time near it, so she lands on the second option without much debate, making her way quickly and silently to the cockpit. 

Gamora pauses for a moment once she gets inside, considers all of the possibilities and then drops into the pilot’s seat. It’s the one Peter considers _his_ , she knows, and ordinarily this seems fair since the ship _was_ his up until he’d invited all of them aboard a few weeks ago. 

Still, she gets an odd sense of satisfaction now from taking the seat, like she might somehow be able to exact revenge on Peter for the way he’s tormenting her subconscious. That thought takes her back to the dream again, of course, to _those noises_ he’d made, and the way he’d moved under her. She thinks also of the way he’d tilted his head back, the way he’d bared his throat to her, and how _gentle_ his hands had been against her back, like she was something sacred, something to be--

“Hey,” comes Peter’s voice, not from imagination or memory but from right behind her.

Gamora whirls around, ready to snap at him until she sees the flush on his cheeks and the bewildered look on his face. He looks half-asleep still, completely unprepared for any sort of interaction. She knows that feeling. 

He scratches his head, then clears his throat. “Uh...you’re in my chair?”

“You weren’t using it,” she says defiantly and doesn’t get up, despite the fact that seeing him so soon after having _that_ dream about him is making her want to bolt back in the opposite direction. She doesn’t know why he felt the need to come up here, but he’s not going to kick her out of a chair just because he feels some kind of possession for it.

Infuriatingly, though, he smirks. “I wasn’t complaining.” He comes the rest of the way to the front and drops into the chair that’s become Rocket’s, sprawling across it in a way that doesn’t seem like it would be comfortable, but that he makes look easy and appealing nonetheless. 

At least he’s gotten dressed, so she doesn’t have to deal with him spreading out in just his underwear. 

“I just wondered why you were here instead of sleeping,” he continues. Then, when she opens her mouth to respond, says, “I know, I know, you could ask me the same thing.” She closes her mouth again, because that is what she was about to say. “But it seems like every time I wake up, you’re already awake, and you’ve already like, done a full circuit of the exercise stuff. And destroyed a punching bag.” 

“That was only one time,” she says defensively, still embarrassed about that. “And it was the old one.” 

“Still damn impressive,” he says easily. 

He sinks further down in the seat, resting his feet on the console and his arms behind his head. That makes his shirt ride up a bit, exposing a sliver of abdomen. She notices again that there’s a line of thicker hair below his navel, leading down to the spot where it vanishes under the waistband of his pants. It isn’t as though she’s never seen it before, but suddenly she has all of the context, can imagine the patch of hair just above his--

“No,” Gamora snaps, realizing belatedly that she’s said it out loud, still disoriented thanks to her utter lack of sleep. She bites her lip, hard.

Peter blinks. “No--Not damn impressive?”

“No,” she repeats, trying to sound like it’s an answer to his question this time. “That bag was far below the specifications for someone of my strength and ability level. I should have known better than to even try using it. It was a waste of a bag, and it did me no good.”

“Well, hey, we got an even better one now,” he says, as if she hadn’t destroyed something of his. She tries to imagine anyone else in her life before this being so forgiving and fails. “And it did the good of making Groot laugh.” 

“It did,” she says, unable to stop her lips from twitching up at the memory of Groot’s high-pitched giggle as he watched from his pot as the punching bag ripped from the ceiling and flew across the room. 

“Is that why you’re up here?” he asks, a searching note in his voice that she might not have heard when they first met. “Cause there’s no punching bags that you’re able to destroy?” 

“I could destroy it if I really wanted to,” she says, avoiding his eyes. 

He makes a noncommittal, falsely casual noise, leaning forward to grab a piece of trash— the balled up wrapper from a ration bar, by the looks of it— and immediately starts fidgeting with it. “I’ll take that as a no.” 

“Why are _you_ here?” she asks. She wishes she had her sword with her, just so she could clean it or something, for something to do with her hands. 

He shrugs. “Who needs to be in rooms when we could be out here?”

She’s thrown for a moment, loses the context and can only wonder whether he could possibly think that their tiny, cramped, barely-private bunks could be considered _rooms_. Then the memory clicks, and she realizes he’s quoting himself from that first night on Xandar.

“Exactly,” says Gamora, now echoing her own words. She sighs, feeling the tension in the air between them again, has the totally irrational thought that he can somehow sense she’s been dreaming about him, that she’s been _consciously_ picturing him naked. That she has reason to wonder if he may have been doing the same of her...and that she doesn’t entirely hate the idea. She clears her throat. “It is a shame we don’t have any hot chocolate here.”

“Oh!” says Peter, his voice sounding equally strained, and she wonders whether he is having the exact same thoughts. “Right, right. We _definitely_ have to fix that.” He sits up abruptly, leaning forward. “Actually, I’m gonna change our course right now!”

“Peter!” she says, alarmed and amused despite herself, though she can’t tell how serious he is. He’s at least a little bit serious. She throws her hand out to stop his, then yanks it away when he stills it and looks at her. Her tone, and posture, are considerably stiffer when she says, “The hot chocolate can wait. We have a job to get to.”

He sticks his lower lip out in a dramatic pout, but sighs and leans back in his chair. “Fine. Maybe Kallu has hot chocolate.” 

“Perhaps,” she says noncommittally. She’s never been there, but she knows it to be basically an ice planet. Hot chocolate would be pretty good to have there, actually. 

“I’m still gonna take you to that hot chocolate place on Krylor one day,” he says. He’s returned to his casual, sprawled out position on the chair, a dreamy sort of smile on his face. “It’s the best.”

The idea of a future outing doesn’t seem as scary to Gamora as it did only a couple short weeks ago, though the fact that it would be a trip purely for pleasure is such a foreign concept to her that she can scarcely picture it. 

“Have you been there a lot?” she asks. 

“Oh, yeah,” he says enthusiastically. “Every time I snuck away from the Ravagers on Krylor, I’d go there. Or to the candy store if we were on Xandar. Or a bar, when I got older.” 

“There’s a candy store on Xandar?” asks Gamora, trying to picture that. It isn’t like she’s unaware of the many and varied types of stores available in various places throughout the galaxy -- she’s been to _very_ specific weapons suppliers, after all -- but the idea of one exclusively for candy seems almost impossibly fantastical.

“Yeah!” Peter says brightly. “I mean, it’s not the only one in the galaxy, obviously, but it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen. It looks like something out of a movie, too. Like -- Like a candy wizard built a castle and filled it with candy magic!”

“Does the candy...do anything to you?” she asks, suddenly wondering whether she’s missing something here with all the talk of wizards.

“Do?” He blinks, then laughs, which makes her bristle a bit. “Oh, no! I just mean...The place is really big and cool-looking. But it’s not actual potions or anything. It just tastes awesome and makes you happy.”

She’s not happy about the misunderstanding, and says a bit snappishly, “Then why did you say it was magic?”

“It seemed that way when I was a kid,” he says, more soberly. “It still does, sometimes. It’s bright and colorful and happy. Pretty much the opposite of the Ravager ship.”

She softens, feeling guilty for snapping. If she’d seen something like that as a kid, after being taken by Thanos, it probably would have seemed magical in comparison to her too. “Did you sneak off a lot?”

“As often as I could, after a while,” he says. “Once I got comfortable enough. Or--comfortable’s not really the best word… Once I got used to the whole being abducted by aliens and forced to become a thief on a giant spaceship thing. Became easier once I got this baby.” 

He pats the chair, looking around at the cockpit fondly, as if he hasn’t seen it in months. 

“When did you get it?” she asks, and not just because she wants to keep the conversation away from herself; she’s genuinely interested. 

“Well…” He hesitates, scratching his head again. “It’s kind of a long story, actually. I don’t wanna bore you.”

Gamora furrows her brow, studying him. Ordinarily he’s all too eager to share stories about his past, about the things he loves, but now he seems...Oddly vulnerable. Almost shy. 

“I want to hear,” she insists, then has to resist the urge to reach out and touch his hand.

“Okay,” says Peter. “Okay, well, when I was about nine--so like a year after I left Earth--Yondu stole it from another Ravager faction. It was retaliation for them spoiling a job of his or something, I don’t remember the details. But anyway, by the time he’d got it away from them, it was pretty much wrecked. He wanted to sell it for junker money, but--Well okay, back up for a second. Yondu had been teaching me how to fly a ship.”

“When you were nine?” asks Gamora, equal parts alarmed and curious. She wonders if she’s misremembering how Terrans age. “Wait. How old are you now?”

“Thirty-four,” he says. “And yeah, I know. I know. Not what most people would consider responsible parenting, but he was never trying to be a responsible parent. He said if I was gonna be on his crew, I had to earn my keep, and flying was part of doing that.”

“All right,” she allows, recalling the sort of training Thanos had put her through at that age. Also not typical for a child. “So you were learning to fly and he stole the ship, but wanted to junk it.”

He nods, stroking his finger over one of the levers by his seat. “Yeah, so, I’d been buggin’ him for a ship basically since the second he started teaching me to fly, but he wouldn’t give me one. Said I’d just destroy it if he gave me one, even though I was totally a better pilot at nine than half the Ravagers were.” 

“I’m sure you were,” Gamora says, not doubting that. 

“So when he got this one, I saw the perfect opportunity,” he says. “I told him that if I could fix up the Milano--unnamed at that point, though--then it wouldn’t matter if I crashed it, since it was already a junker.”

“Did he immediately see the logic in that and give the ship to you?” she asks wryly. 

Peter snorts. “Not quite. He laughed and said, _’You think a kid could fix this hunk o’ junk? _’ I said Star-Lord can. He let me. Probably just for shits and giggles, but.” He shrugs.__

__Gamora can’t help but smile, imagining him as a little kid, going after what he wants, unafraid to stand up to Yondu. “So I’m guessing you did manage to fix it.”_ _

__“Hell yeah!” he says proudly. “Took me a year to get it flyable, another to get it into good condition. But I did it.”_ _

__“That is very impressive,” she says sincerely. She has to admit that she has underestimated him more than once, or perhaps fallen for the facade that he shows the world -- the one of being shallow, irresponsible, lazy. But none of those things are true, she’s realizing more and more. And really she shouldn’t be surprised -- She is accustomed to being underestimated as well, although she isn’t quite as intentional about it as Peter._ _

__“Yeah?” he asks, looking surprised by her reaction. Then he smiles, that flush climbing his cheeks again. “I mean--I mean, yeah, I guess it _was_ pretty good for a dumb little Terran kid.”_ _

__She feels a surge of protectiveness toward him at the self-deprecation, the reflex to challenge it taking over before she’s even thought about what she’s doing. “Rebuilding a spacecraft does not sound like a thing a _dumb_ kid would even begin to be able to do.”_ _

__The color in his cheeks darkens even more, and she thinks his smile might just look the most genuine she’s ever seen it. “Still one o’ my proudest accomplishments, yeah.”_ _

__“Rightfully so,” she says, wanting to keep that pleased look on his face. “Did he give it to you then?”_ _

__“Yep,” he says proudly. “Toyed with me for a bit, wouldn’t give me a straight answer.” That doesn’t surprise her. “But eventually he surprised me, had the tape player installed.”_ _

__“That is...nice,” she says. She dislikes Yondu. Whenever she thinks of him, she sees him nearly killing Peter and a surge of anger floods her. But this is clearly a fond memory for Peter, so she keeps that to herself._ _

__“It was,” he says, with a gentle sort of happiness that makes a surge of something else flow through her. She refuses to analyze it. “This ship is my favorite thing I own, besides the stuff my mom gave me.” He fiddles with the Walkman, eternally at his side, and shrugs. “I guess it’s dumb to love inanimate objects so much. Especially to name ‘em. But…”_ _

__He trails off, doesn’t seem to have any plans to complete that sentence. She hesitates, torn between her usual desire to not reveal personal things to anybody, and her desire to make sure he’s not out on that vulnerable ledge alone._ _

__The choice gets easier every day._ _

__“I named my sword,” she tells him. She wishes again that she had it with her._ _

__Peter’s eyes light up at that. “You did?” He clears his throat. “I mean, of course you did. That thing is _sweet._ ”_ _

__She blinks. “The Godslayer is one of the most powerful weapons in the galaxy. I would not call it ‘sweet.’”_ _

__He gapes at her again for a moment, then breaks into a grin of clear delight. “You named your sword the Godslayer?”_ _

__“Yes,” says Gamora, feeling an immediate surge of defensiveness. She is accustomed to being evaluated unkindly, being mocked for everything that she does, thinks, cares about. All of her instincts say there is no reason for this to be any different. “I was raised to be the most dangerous weapon in the galaxy. I was not about to call it the Puppyslayer.”_ _

__“Well that would just be _sad_ ,” says Peter, looking mildly horrified. “Bet Thanos would’ve been a big fan, though. From what you’ve told me, he seems like the kinda guy who’d enjoy killing puppies.”_ _

__Gamora shakes her head. “He is not...that particular brand of cruel. He would see killing puppies as a waste of time.”_ _

__“But not gods, clearly,” says Peter. He leans in a bit, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “I think Godslayer’s a really cool name.”_ _

__“Really?” she asks before she can stop herself._ _

__“Yeah, totally,” he says with a grin. “It’s super badass. I kinda wished I’d have thought of it, so I could name my blasters that. Can I steal it?”_ _

__“No,” she says immediately. She’s fairly certain he’s not serious, but she can’t fight the surge of possessiveness, of ownership and pride she feels over the name, and the sword itself. “There is only one Godslayer.”_ _

__“Okay, good point,” he says, throwing his hands up in a common gesture of surrender, one she’s noticed Peter does fairly often in a joking manner. “There’s only one Milano, too.”_ _

__She elects not to point out that it seems to be the same model as the other Ravager ships of this design. She supposes those would not have the tape player; nor would they have the same unquantifiable but undeniable sense of _Peter_ she feels when walking into this one. _ _

__“What is the significance of that name?” she asks curiously._ _

__“It’s the last name of an actress on Earth,” he says. “I had a huge crush on her when I was a kid.”_ _

__“You had a crush as a child?” asks Gamora, thinking again of how young he left Earth. It’s hard to believe that is a typical part of Terran development when it’s so different from her own perspective, yet he’s said it entirely casually, like it has no particular meaning beyond his usual anecdotes._ _

__“Well yeah,” says Peter. “Alyssa Milano was gorgeous, plus she played kind of a badass on TV.”_ _

__“Did you know her?” asks Gamora, still trying to understand what he’s saying._ _

__Peter laughs, though not unkindly. “No, no. She was a celebrity like--like Kevin Bacon. But I liked watching her on TV, and sometimes I’d fantasize about meeting her and convincing her to go on a date with me where we’d hold hands and share headphones. You know, kid crush stuff.”_ _

__“Is that...common on Terra?” asks Gamora, acutely aware that it’s probably a stupid question._ _

__He shrugs. “Well yeah, I guess. Didn’t you have any crushes growing up?”_ _

__“No,” says Gamora, the answer pure reflex, and one she’s certain she’s going to regret. This is yet another step beyond the most personal information she’s previously shared with him. Still, she’s started, so… “I have never had a ‘crush.’”_ _

___Until now,_ her traitorous mind chimes in._ _

__“Oh!” he says with clear surprise. She bristles instinctively, bracing herself for the judgment she expects to follow, as this is apparently a normal pastime or trait that she’s missed out on. But instead he just says, “Hey, that’s okay! We should totally get you one, though, so you can name stuff after ‘em. Oh, you know what would be good? _Star Wars_. You’d totally have a crush on Han Solo, he’s just like me.” _ _

__Choosing to ignore that last part, Gamora asks, “What is Star Wars?”_ _

__“Only the greatest movies ever made!” he says eagerly. “Settle in, Gamora, it’s a long, thrilling tale!”_ _

__She really ought to go back to bed. Or go put on her normal clothes so she can otherwise start the day, though it’s still so early. But Peter’s face gets so animated when he discusses Terran movies or music or anything, she finds she just can’t resist._ _

__“All right,” she says, leaning back in her seat with a small smile and a shake of her head. There’s no harm, she figures. She enjoys his company, despite her body’s irritating reaction to him._ _

__“A long time ago,” Peter says dramatically, voice deeper and slower than usual, “in a galaxy far, far away…”_ _


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've updated the expected number of chapters to 10! Assuming these dumb dumbs cooperate, that's how it's gonna stay lol

“Why are we back here?” asks Gamora, taking in the familiar sights and sounds of Xandar. There are smells, too, but she’s trying to ignore those for the moment, as she does anytime she’s in a heavily-populated area. 

It isn’t that she’s unhappy to be back on Xandar so soon after their last visit, she’s just unaccustomed to planet-hopping so rapidly, to spending so much time docked rather than on Sanctuary. There’s also the fact that she’s relatively certain Peter is about to take them to another bar, or somewhere else that’s equally rowdy, given that he’s being secretive about it.

“I told you!” says Peter, glancing back over his shoulder at her and Drax. “We’re celebrating! Another job totally owned by the Guardians of the Galaxy!”

“One cannot own a job,” says Drax. “It is intangible.”

Peter sighs. “It’s a figure of speech, dude.”

“It is foolish,” Drax insists.

“Yes, it is,” says Gamora, though she means the decision rather than the figure of speech. “We just made more money, why do you immediately want to spend it?”

“What’s the point of having money otherwise?” he asks. He walks backwards for a moment to look at them, nearly trips over a crack in the sidewalk, and turns back around. 

“Keeping our ship running,” she says dryly. “Having enough money for food and fuel.”

“Knives,” is Drax’s only contribution. 

“That all also requires spending the units,” Peter points out. When he grins back at her, she glares. “But hey, luckily we are gonna get food! So it totally counts.” 

“I am not eating anything at a bar,” Gamora says firmly. She’d had one drink that first time he dragged them all out, and that had been fine, but it’s not a risk she wants to take again, especially on whatever passes for _food_ from such a place. 

“What about some chocolate?” Peter asks. He’s practically jumping up and down as he walks now. She has a feeling he’d run or skip if she and Drax weren’t there slowing him down. 

“I have rarely seen chocolate served at bars,” Drax says. “Unless it is in a drink.”

Peter shakes his head. “No, we’re not--just look!” 

They’ve rounded a corner now and they’re on a new street. Peter gestures to a building on their right, though it’s hardly necessary for him to point it out; her eyes are drawn to it immediately. She nearly gasps aloud. 

Its design appears to be emulating an old-fashioned engine or some other kind of mechanical structure, but the parts are wrong and over-sized. There are some curved pipes along the top portion that are large enough for Drax to slide through, and some incredibly large gears spinning on the front. 

However, it’s the name more than anything that’s caught her attention: a large sign on the front of the building names it _The Candy Emporium._

“The Candy Emperor?” Drax booms immediately, his voice reverberating between buildings and making Gamora shake her head. “Where is the candy kingdom?”

“ _Emporium,_ ” Gamora corrects.

“You’re not gonna ask how an emperor can be a building?” Peter asks at the same time.

“Why would an emperor be a building?” asks Drax. “Unless it was the kingdom of buildings, but it clearly says candy!”

“Well the name is on it…” Peter insists, clearly a challenge.

“That is a sign,” says Drax, “indicating that the Candy Emperor lives there. Did you think it was a person?”

“No,” says Peter, “but you--”

Drax points at Peter, laughing uproariously. “You thought the building was a person! Terran vision is pathetic!”

Peter bristles. “I _know_ it’s not a person, it’s a building. I was just teasing you, man. Because...Because, you know, the literal thing?”

Drax frowns. “What literal thing?”

“ _Emporium!_ ” Gamora interrupts, practically doing her own shouting now. “Emporium. Not emperor. As in, a retailer of goods. Presumably candy.”

“Exactly!” Peter says, easily going with the change of subject -- or really, the return to the _original_ subject. “This is the best candy store in the galaxy. It’s got a whole floor dedicated to chocolate.” 

He grins at Gamora and moves his eyebrows up and down in that odd way he has, apparently meant to be suggestive of something. She mostly finds it ridiculous. Though the idea of an entire floor of such a large building dedicated to chocolate is making it difficult for her not to be visibly excited. She’s only had one type of chocolate so far: hot chocolate that Peter informed her was not even the best variety of the drink there is. The prospect of so much more is...terrifying, in how badly she wants to experience it. 

“That sounds like a lot,” she says, in as even a voice as she can muster. 

Peter nods. “It is! Let’s go!” He has no qualms about showing his excitement, nearly racing up the set of steps that lead up to the large door of the building. 

“But will you able to see it?” Drax asks as they catch up to him at the door. He laughs loudly at his own joke. “Or will you think the chocolate is all people too?”

“We should have made him stay back with Groot,” Peter mutters, apparently meant only for Gamora to hear. 

“You started the teasing,” she points out, then has to repeat herself a bit louder. It’s easy to forget that Peter doesn’t share her enhanced hearing.

When he understands, he juts his lower lip out in an expression it takes her a moment to read as actual _pouting._ It’s been a long time since she’s been in an environment where anyone would dare to be petulant without fearing for their life, but in retrospect, she probably should have expected it of him.

Oblivious, Drax steps through the door and disappears inside, laughing so loudly that they can still hear him for several long moments, fading off into the background din of the store. Peter meets Gamora’s eyes, then shakes his head.

“You’re still supposed to be on my side,” he says, normal volume now.

She arches an eyebrow. “And why is that?”

“Because you’re my friend,” Peter says easily. 

“Drax is my friend too,” she points out, though she has to admit that what she has with Peter is...different.

“True.” He thinks for a moment, then smiles again. “Oh! But! I brought you to the Candy Empire. So you should totally be on my side.”

“Didn’t we just establish that it’s not an empire?” she says. 

“Did we?” He shrugs, grins, and pushes the door, holding it open as he apparently expects her to precede him through it. 

She hesitates, instinctively wary of some sort of trick. It’s only for a second, though. It gets easier every day to dispel that fear, to remind herself that she trusts Peter more than she’s ever trusted anyone. So she steps through the doorway and freezes about two feet in. 

It’s like stepping into some sort of fever dream, except that she never would have dared to even dream up a place like this. She’s immediately assaulted by the sight and smell of more candy than she previously knew existed, all different varieties, shapes, colors, and sizes, and it’s _everywhere_. 

Somehow the building appears even bigger on the inside than it did from the outside. There appear to be two levels, divided by a partly-open ceiling that allows her to see some of the upper level. 

_This_ level is large enough that she thinks the entire Milano might be able to fit inside it. It’s certainly tall enough. Shelves line every wall, reaching higher than even she could jump, all filled to the brim with sweets. All through the middle, there are round structures with more oversized pipes that go up to the ceiling and beyond. As she watches, a child presses something on a screen and a veritable river of candy comes flowing down the pipe and out into a large bag the child is holding at the end of it, laughing gleefully. 

For a moment she’s struck by the amount of color in the place. It’s so vast, so garish, so _busy_ that it’s overwhelming. The sights, sounds, and smells are much more pleasant than the ones in the bar, to be sure, but that doesn’t prevent them from assaulting her enhanced senses, making her head spin. She has the sudden strong sense that she’s having some very bizarre hallucination, perhaps of the sort that she’s had before after her modification surgeries. 

Perhaps this place isn’t real.

Perhaps _none_ of the past few weeks has been real -- Not the Milano, not Peter, not Ronan’s defeat on Xandar. Perhaps _that_ is the true plan, Thanos’s latest punishment scheme. That would be fitting, given her intentions to betray him. Really, that’s more likely than the thought that she’s actually succeeded in any sort of escape.

“Gamora,” comes Peter’s voice, vaguely through the fog.

She ignores it, trying to decide how to proceed. If this is a dream of sorts, should she be trying to wake herself, or simply enjoy it for as long as possible?

She hears her name again, louder, this time accompanied by a hand on her shoulder. The unexpected touch makes her jump, the strange sort of fog she’s been in dissipating as if she’s jumped right out of it. 

“Gamora?” Peter repeats. He waves his other hand in front of her face. “You in there? Did the candy emperor hypnotize you or something?” 

She furrows her brow in confusion. “What?”

“Are you okay?” he asks, more seriously. 

“I’m not sure,” she says honestly. She makes herself blink a few times as if that might help clear up what remains of the mental fog. 

The dreams she had after her surgeries were never this realistic. They never lasted this long. And they were almost always about her childhood on Zehoberei, not some extremely detailed vision of a future that lasts for nearly a month. It’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility, she supposes, for her to dream of something outside the norm, but now that she’s somewhat adjusted to the sensory overload of this place, she acknowledges that her dreams never felt like this. 

Besides, if this is a dream, she thinks it would be better to stay in it. 

“You’re not sure?” Peter asks. He bends down so his face is closer to hers, eyes squinted as if examining her for signs of illness. 

“No,” she says, then shakes herself mentally. “Yes. I’m fine. It’s just--a lot.” 

“Oh,” he says, his tone less worried, but his eyes no less so. “I mean, yeah. Supposedly this is one of the biggest candy stores in the galaxy. But...I guess I just thought you’d like it better than the bar. We don’t have to be here if you don’t wanna!” He looks distressed by the idea of that, though. Probably disappointed that she’s not sharing his enthusiasm for this place.

“I did not say that,” Gamora says carefully. And it’s true -- she _does_ want to explore this place, and appreciates his thoughtfulness in bringing her here, too. “It is better than the bar. And I want to be here. Just…enhanced senses can be a burden at times.”

Peter studies her again, his eyes widening as those words seem to sink in. “Oh. _Oh!_ Shit, yeah, I never even thought about that. What does it feel like?”

She considers, then decides to just tell him the truth. “Like a fever dream, of sorts. Like--the dreams I used to have after Thanos would work on my modifications.”

“Oh, damn,” he mutters. “That sounds awful.” 

She shrugs. “It is not the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.” 

“Does it make the top ten?” he asks. It seems like an odd question, but he says it seriously, and this is a system she’s heard him reference before, when attempting to come up with lists of his favorite songs, movies, TV shows, candies, any number of other things. 

“I’ve never ranked anything in that manner,” she says. “But...perhaps.”

“Are you sure you wanna stay?” he asks. “I meant for this to be a happy thing.”

“I’m sure,” she says. She is sure she wants to try, anyway. The smells _are_ fantastic, if overwhelming. And she doesn’t want to disappoint him. She offers him a small smile. “But I have no idea where to start.”

“Well, luckily you’ve got me!” He squeezes her shoulder then finally lets his hand drop. She’d nearly forgotten it was there. It’s so strange; sometimes she’s hyper-aware of his every touch, every accidental brush of his fingers sending an electric current through her that seems to linger far longer than it should. But sometimes it feels so natural it’s almost like his hand, or arm or occasionally leg, when they sit close together, is an extension of herself, and the spot he was touching feels cold when he removes it. 

“Yes,” says Gamora, allowing him to hear the sincere gratitude in her voice. “I do.”

It feels foolish, like doing calisthenics on the edge of a precipice, but since when has she ever been one to run from risk? Or to fear anything at all? (That last is a lie, she knows: She fears many things, though death has never been one of them.) 

Peter looks surprised at that, then pleased in that strange, vulnerable way of his. She expects him to make a joke or to brag about it, but instead he looks genuinely thrilled, as though nobody has expressed that specific sentiment in a very long time. Or...perhaps like it matters a great deal for _her_ to have said it.

“So,” she says, suddenly needing to move this forward, because the silence between them is starting to feel entirely too intense. “You were going to show me where to start. Where _should_ that be?”

He seems to consider for a moment, like he might be a little bit overwhelmed by it all too. “Well...upstairs is chocolate. That’s gonna be your favorite, so we should save it for last.”

“That sounds reasonable,” she is forced to admit, though she’s torn between wanting to go to the chocolate right away and believing she doesn’t deserve it at all. 

“Everything else is gonna be good, too!” Peter assures her, apparently reading at least part of that from her tone. “Here, let me show you my favorite!” 

She’s barely able to manage half a nod before Peter is taking her hand and pulling her through the store, weaving through the crowd. She allows it only because he surprised her, she tells herself, and not because he’s got a stupidly excited look on his face, or because his hand is rough and calloused but also surprisingly soft. Nothing to do with that.

“What is your favorite?” she asks, having to raise her voice to be heard above the still ridiculous noise level in this place. 

“Well, okay, my favorite-favorite is this stuff called Gear Shift,” he says. “But they don’t sell that on Xandar. I gotta stock up every time I go to Oorga. But _this_ is my favorite _kind_ of candy!” 

He stops so rapidly that she might have slammed into him if her reflexes weren’t what they are. He gestures grandly to a tall, cylindrical, rotating display of some type of candy on sticks. “Lollipops!” 

Gamora blinks, immediately apprehensive at the name. “Do they...pop?” She supposes that they could also loll, but she’s less concerned about that possibility. Peter seems like the sort of person who might like a candy that could unpredictably explode in his face, perhaps showering him in goopy, garish sugar.

He looks confused at her question, though, and maybe also noticing the way that she’s tensed. “What?”

“You said they are called lollipops, yes?” says Gamora. Perhaps they are having another translator problem. “Do they pop? Or...explode?”

“Oh!” He tries to restrain himself, she sees him doing it, but he loses that particular battle and starts giggling. “No, no, that’s just the name. Actually I don’t know why that’s the name, but they definitely don’t pop. You know what does, though? Gear Shift. It reminds me of these candies they had on Earth called Pop Rocks. They were like rocks made out of sugar, but then you put them in your mouth and they got all fizzy and...and pop-y! It was awesome.”

“Is that not dangerous?” she asks, thinking she wouldn’t want to eat anything that would pop inside her mouth. 

Peter shakes his head, still giggling a bit. “Nah, it just felt cool! Kinda like how soda fizzes, you know? But more intense.”

“I have never had soda,” she informs him. 

His jaw drops, shocked by this information even though she’s told him how few varieties of food she’s been able to try. “Right, well, that’s going on the list.”

“List?” she asks. 

“List of foods you’ve gotta try,” he clarifies. “Right up there with proper hot chocolate. And lollipops! Which we can cross off the list right now. They come in a bajllion different flavors, so there’s definitely gonna be some that you like!”

Gamora takes in the display, surprised to see that each lollipop has its own label underneath it proclaiming a different flavor. They seem to be flavored like other foods, some of which she doesn’t even recognize. Most of the ones she does recognize are fruits, but there are some others like popcorn, coffee, pepper. 

There’s also a chocolate one. Her fingers twitch. 

“Is there only one of each?” she asks, concerned. 

“Oh, no,” he says. “Look!” He grabs one that advertises itself as _tropical_ flavored, whatever that entails. As soon as he does, another one of the same variety pops out from behind it, taking its place. Perhaps that is why they’re called lollipops. 

“Is that what I am looking at?” asks Gamora, gesturing to the new lollipop that’s just appeared. That seems to be the obvious answer, but she’s learned over the past few weeks to never take anything for granted with Peter. That just leads to more embarrassing misunderstandings. 

“Yeah!” he says brightly, gesturing with the lollipop. “But also that!” He points toward another display next to the enormous wall of lollipops. This one is round and lined with holes that contain what appear to be miniature versions of the same lollipops they’ve just been browsing. They even have numbers corresponding to flavor and position, apparently some sort of a key. 

“What are those?” asks Gamora, wondering whether it’s perhaps a display designed to cater to some particularly small race. Then again, these would practically be Orloni-sized lollipops. She thinks, unbidden, of Groot in his pot, and smiles at the image of one of these candies clutched in his tiny hand.

“Samples!” says Peter, clearly delighted at the opportunity to explain this to her. “They’re free so you can try, like, a bunch of ‘em before you decide what kinds of lollipops you wanna buy.”

“That is thoughtful,” she says, surprised by that. 

“I guess it is.” He shrugs a shoulder. “So, let’s see...Obviously you wanna try the chocolate one, that’s 112. Blue Memon is amazing, you have to try that. What else do you wanna try?”

“That will be sufficient,” she says stiffly. “I do not want take advantage of the display.”

“That’s what the samples are there for!” Peter insists. “It’s not like we’re not gonna buy any. You gotta find out what your favorites are. How else are you gonna know what you wanna put in your candy stash?”

“Candy stash?” she repeats. The name seems to imply what it is, but since she doesn’t have one, she’s not sure. 

“Yeah, you know,” he says. It should be obvious that she doesn’t. “Like, a box or a drawer or something that you hide, where you keep a stash of candy so you can have some when there’s a candy emergency. Like when you’re sad or there’s not any other good food. Or if you just want candy.”

“Do you have one?” she asks, since he sounds as though he’s speaking from experience.

Peter looks around the store, as if checking for spies, or perhaps for Drax. Though she’s occasionally heard his booming laughter echoing throughout the store, she hasn’t seen him since they came in.

After a few seconds of this exaggerated inspection, Peter turns back to her and whispers, “Yeah. I’ve always had one, since I was a kid on the Eclector.” 

She arches an eyebrow, equal parts surprised and impressed. She has to admit that a large part of that stems from the few disastrous attempts she’d made to hoard nice things under Thanos’ harsh reign. In each case, she’d been discovered and punished in ways that had basically eliminated any desire to ever try again. She knows the Ravagers were not _that_ cruel, but they don’t exactly seem to have treated Peter well, either.

“How did you do that?” she asks, when he doesn’t immediately volunteer the rest of the story. He seems to want her to know, but he’s hesitating.

“Well…” He pauses for another moment, then deftly grabs one of the Blue Memon samples for himself, unwraps it, and sticks it into his mouth. Then he continues, speaking around the candy so that his words are slightly distorted. “Turns out, when you’re a little kid and you first get to space, most of the stuff you eat makes you sick. Or...I dunno, maybe most of the stuff the _Ravagers_ eat makes you sick. Anyway, point is, I was sick a lot.”

“I had a similar experience,” she admits. And was promptly punished for it, modified so that her digestive system would no longer be so _weak_. It was one of her first surgeries. 

“Really?” Peter asks, surprised. “I figured Terran stomachs were just weak. That’s what the Ravagers would say, anyway, while they laughed at me throwing up.”

Gamora can feel her face pulling into a scowl. She could punch the Ravagers so hard in the stomachs that _they_ would throw up. “It is difficult for most people to adjust to food from other planets” She recalls Nebula having the same problem. 

“Yeah, my stomach was not loving that adjustment period,” he says with a low whistle. “But it turns out it did still love candy. I almost never ran into a candy I couldn’t eat. So I got as much of it as I could and hid it on the ship.”

“And that worked?” she asks. 

“Yeah!” he says proudly. “Yondu actually let it slip about this loose panel in the laundry room, and I figured that would be the perfect spot to hide it since none of the Ravagers ever wash their clothes.”

The scowl deepens into an expression of outright disgust. It's not as though she couldn't _smell_ how filthy the Ravagers were when she was among them, but the confirmation still makes her stomach knot unpleasantly. “Please tell me that you wash your clothes, Peter.”

“What?” He looks taken aback by the question, which is fair given the abrupt swerve in conversational topic. Then he blushes furiously, taking the sample lollipop out of his mouth to clear his throat, and showing her a flash of blue-stained tongue in the process. “Yeah, of course. I mean, I do _now._ Honestly, I know you don't think the Milano is, like, the cleanest ever, but getting out of the Ravager filth was at least half the reason I wanted a ship of my own.”

“I think the Milano is the nicest place I have lived since childhood,” says Gamora, both charitably and sincerely. When he appears unable to respond to that, she reaches out, rests her hand on his wrist for a moment, and then tries to steer the conversation back on topic. “So, your stash?”

It takes him a few seconds to answer, and it takes her an equal amount of seconds to realize that it’s because he’s staring at her hand where it sits on his arm. She rips it away, fisting it at her side, then has to consciously relax it. 

“Uh—right, yeah.” He clears his throat. “Well, I was pretty sure the one on the Eclector was magic, because sometimes extra candy would just appear there. I’m still not sure how it got there.”

She raises her eyebrows skeptically. “Is it possible that someone put the candy there?”

He shrugs. “I guess, but I don’t think anyone could’ve known it was there. Except I guess Yondu. Oh.” His eyes widen. 

Gamora presses her lips together to refrain from commenting. She dislikes Yondu, whether or not he occasionally slipped Peter some extra candy as a child. But she doesn’t want to take a pleasant moment away from him, since he’s just seemed to realize that was probably the case. So instead she says, “Do you still have one?”

“Of course!” he says. Then, “Well. I did. It went down with the Milano.”

“Oh,” says Gamora, feeling that loss in an oddly acute way. It’s nonsensical, yet there it is: a little pit of sadness in her stomach. She can picture the candy melting in the crash, or perhaps just being lost in the wreckage of the ship. She doesn’t mention the thought she’s had several times over the past couple of weeks, which is how lucky he is that the tape from his mother did not suffer the same fate. 

“Yeah,” says Peter, grabbing another sample lollipop (this one oddly sparkly) and sticking it into his mouth. His cheeks hollow out a bit as he sucks on it, and she can’t help having her gaze drawn to his lips for a moment.

“Well,” she says, mostly to refocus herself, “where _was_ your stash on the Milano?”

“Hidden compartment,” says Peter, “right under the pilot’s seat. You know, easy access.”

She offers him a little smile. “Indeed.”

He looks contemplative for another few beats, then his eyes brighten again. “Hey! You wanna help me make the new one?”

“Do I want to--what?” she asks, wondering if he’s misspoke, or she’s misunderstood. 

“Help me make my new candy stash!” he says, gaining in eagerness as he speaks. “Obviously I gotta get a new stash. Right now I am totally unprepared for a candy emergency. But you could help me pick out all the candy to go in a new one. Then it can be ours!”

“You would really be willing to share your stash?” she asks, though that’s undoubtedly what he said. The idea of being willing to share food is almost a foreign concept to her. She is used to having to protect her food. She’s stabbed siblings for trying to take hers. And though she’s been with the Guardians long enough to know that she doesn’t need to do that anymore--even though Groot can get a bit grabby, if it comes within his reach--it’s still not something she’s used to. 

And it’s still a surprise that Peter is so open with his. 

“Yeah, of course,” he says, like it’s a given. “I mean, unless you don’t want to. You could totally have your own candy stash. Rival candy stashes.” 

“No,” she says, surprisingly quickly. “That sounds--fine. Good.” 

Peter raises his eyebrows, studying her. “‘Fine’? That doesn’t sound...particularly fine.”

“It’s fine,” she says automatically, then sighs, irritated with herself. Of course he isn’t going to buy that answer, and he shouldn’t, with how utterly lame it is. There is no reason for her to hide this from him, particularly with everything he’s just shared. “It’s just--Your candy stash was a secret because it was important to you, right? Something you kept for yourself, as a comfort.”

“Well yeah,” he says easily, clearly still not following. “Is that like…” He breaks off, his eyes widening again. “I bet Thanos was really anti-candy, right? Did you…have a bad candy experience?”

“No,” Gamora says immediately. “I have not been -- traumatized -- by candy.” She takes a breath, blows it out again. “But...all resources were scarce. We had to fight for them, often to the death. Why would you share something so important with me when I could take it, or otherwise use it to hurt you?”

“Cause you won’t,” he says, like it’s obvious. “Well--you’ll obviously take some, since it’ll be your candy, too. But I trust you.” 

She feels the urge to ask _why?_ , as well as the strange, nearly overwhelming desire to embrace him, both of which she suppresses violently. She’s still not sure why he trusts her, or whether it makes him exceptionally brave or exceptionally foolish, but she wants to prove that she’s worthy of his trust. Worthy of his friendship. 

“Okay,” she says. “I will help you make a candy stash.” 

“Awesome!” He holds his hand up and she obliges him with one of his beloved _high fives_. She even allows herself a small smile. 

“I suppose I had better get on this all-important tasting, then, shouldn’t I?” she asks, standing in front of the lollipop wall, not wanting to admit that she’s intimidated by the selection. 

“It’s a very important step,” Peter says solemnly.

“All right,” she says firmly. “I will try this one.” She selects the first one that’s flavored like a fruit she recognizes, and before she can hesitate, she unwraps it and sticks it in her mouth like she’d seen him do. 

This lollipop is yellow, but she scarcely has time to register that before the flavor seems to explode into her mouth. It’s equal parts sweet and tart, making her mouth water as it starts to melt. It makes her think of the pool for some reason she can’t quantify, of bright sun and warm water, and before she even knows it, there’s a soft little moan slipping along the back of her throat.

Gamora snaps her head up, pulls the lollipop from her mouth and licks her lips, clearing her throat. Peter is looking at her, his own cheeks flushed, his lollipop back in his mouth too. He crunches down on it and then swallows, the bulge of his larynx bobbing visibly. 

“Good?” he asks, taking the now-bare stick out of his mouth. 

“Yes,” says Gamora, aiming for casual and aware that she’s missed that by a mile. “We should add that one to the stash.”

“Absolutely!” he agrees delightedly, grabbing a handful of them. He glances around for a moment, then snags what appears to be a very small mesh bag from a dispenser at the end of the display. It grows as he shakes it out, getting larger to accommodate the lollipops he’s dropping into it.

She looks back at the wall of samples, wanting another but unsure which one to choose when there are so many choices. 

“Try the chocolate one!” Peter supplies after only a second of her hesitating. He grabs the sample of that one and hands it to her, taking one for himself as well. 

She obliges, finding that she’s happy to take his direction on sweets, though she’s sure nothing could be better than the one she just had. 

Of course, she’s immediately proven wrong. She makes another noise, and can’t even find the energy to be embarrassed about it this time because she’s so focused on how _good_ this is. It’s not as good as the hot chocolate, but it’s close. 

“This one too,” she says, tossing the stick in the nearby trash can and facing the sample wall with more confidence. 

“Yes ma’am!” Peter says cheerfully. He grabs even more of those and adds them to the bag. 

They continue like that for a while, sometimes Gamora selecting the ones she wants to try, sometimes Peter suggesting them. She’s a little ashamed of her own lack of self restraint, because she loves all but two of them; she remains uncertain why grass and pepper flavored ones even exist. To each species their own, she supposes. 

“I think that is enough lollipops,” Gamora says finally. It’s only then that she sees how large the bag has gotten, though the mesh seems to stretch almost infinitely. Peter’s got the handles slung over one shoulder, but it weighs enough to hang down near his hip. She can see the subtle bulge of his bicep through his shirt.

“You think?” Peter teases lightly, looking at the bag too. 

She feels her cheeks flush again instantly, has to bite back on the rush of shame, the sense that she’s going to be punished for thinking she might be able to have anything so extravagant, so luxuriously _good_. “All right, perhaps too many. Perhaps we should--”

“Uh uh,” Peter interrupts, clearly understanding where that train of thought is headed. “No way, we are _not_ putting anything back. If it makes it into our bag, we buy it. That’s the rule.”

Gamora frowns. “I have not seen any signs indicating that rule.”

“It’s _my_ rule,” he says. He glances around for a moment, then holds up a hand with two fingers wriggling. “There. That’s my sign for it.”

She blinks. She’s pretty sure that he’s joking, but she can’t say for sure. “That is not exactly the type of sign I expected.”

“That’s because you don’t know candy signs as well as I do,” he says confidently. “I’m the candy expert--no, the candy _king_. And I will show you the ways of my kingdom! Our first lesson is complete, and now onto: the gummies!” 

Before she can even begin to formulate a response to that, Peter spins around on his heel and marches dramatically off towards another area of the store. She follows him, bemused, but not unpleasantly so. The corner of her mouth is turning up in a way she’s powerless to stop. 

“Would you not rather be Candy-Lord?” she asks after a few seconds, when all of his odd rant has finally sunk in. 

He stops and looks at her with wide eyes and a wider grin. “You’re so right. Oh my god, that’s a much better name. Candy-Lord! You’re so smart. That’s why you’re the Candy...Queen? Candy Prime?” 

“Candy Warrior,” Gamora decides, cheeks flushed with pleasure at his rambling praise. 

“I love it!” he declares. “And you’ll love this!” He gestures with a flourish to what they’re standing in front of: one of those floor-to-ceiling tubes, with dispensers all around the bottom, a screen in front of each one with all the options. 

“What is it?” she asks warily, examining it. She can discern that it dispenses some kind of candy, but given the extravagance of everything else around, she’s afraid that if she touches the controls, she might find herself doused in a river of sugar or something. She does _not_ need that type of embarrassment.

“Gummies!” says Peter, delightedly. “All different kinds of ‘em!”

“Okay,” she says slowly, “but what _is_ a gummy?” It sounds like some especially pathetic type of animal to her ear, though she’s relatively sure candy isn’t typically made from meat or any other type of flesh.

He considers for a moment, shifting the lollipop bag to his other shoulder and scratching his head. “They’re like...um...soft, and a little bit sticky. They jiggle when you touch them. They’re just...they’re _gummy._ But not gum, that’s something else, which you also totally need to try.”

“That is not very helpful,” she says, no closer to being able to picture it. She might actually be further. 

He shrugs a shoulder, unconcerned. “Ah, well. Guess you’ll just have to see for yourself!” He touches one of the screens, and so many options pop up that it nearly makes her head spin. There are some pictures, but Peter scrolls through so fast, occasionally making a selection, that she can’t properly take them in. She can’t even read what he’s selected. 

“There’s a ton of different kinds,” he says as he clicks. “So you should try a few--representative samples first. To see what you like. Then we can narrow it down. Or not.” He grins and shakes the bag of lollipops. 

She hardly has time to blush before candies come falling through the giant tube. She watches their descent, oddly fascinated though she’s seen plenty of things fall before. They land in the tray in front of them, and Peter scoops them up. There’s only a few, all different colors, though they’re the same size, small and round. 

“Here,” he urges, holding his cupped hands out to her. The lollipop bag shifts down his shoulder a bit, but it doesn’t fall. She should take that from him, she thinks, but he’s clearly not focused on its weight at the moment. 

She opens her palms and lets him dump the gummies into them, holding her breath for a few seconds. She isn’t sure what she might be expecting -- perhaps for it to stick to her, or start jiggling of its own accord -- but nothing happens. She glances back up at Peter, arching an eyebrow.

“Taste it!” he says eagerly. He points to one of the lighter colored pieces, which makes Gamora suddenly acutely aware of how large his fingertip is by comparison. “Maybe that one first. It’s similar to that yellow lollipop you liked. It tastes like -- Well, on Earth it would be a pineapple, I guess, but it just occurred to me that you’d never have tasted one of those.”

She hesitates again, though, another thought occurring to her. “Are you sure that is permitted? We have eaten a great deal, and paid for nothing.”

“We’ve only eaten samples,” he says, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Which is way less than what we’re gonna end up buying.” He shakes the bag, then lowers his voice and leans closer to whisper, “Trust me. I’ve stolen plenty of candy before, I know the difference.” 

Gamora quickly looks around, paranoid that someone has overheard them and is about to realize that they’re criminals, but nobody else is paying them any mind, too distracted by the candy. 

She still doesn’t know where Drax got to. 

“All right,” she says, pinching the candy he’d indicated between two fingers and popping it into her mouth. 

Peter was correct: it is very similar to that first lollipop in taste, though nothing alike in texture. She has to chew this one rather than lick or suck. It sticks to her teeth and the roof of her mouth. She’s not entirely sure that she likes it. 

“It is good,” she says, once she’s managed to finish it. “But difficult to eat.” 

“Try this one.” He points to a pink one. “I think it’s less chewy. Oh, it is sour though. I don’t know if you like sour stuff.” 

“I don’t know if I do,” says Gamora, regarding the candy for a moment. “As I have told you, I am unaccustomed to my rations having much flavor at all.”

His eyes turn sad at that. “Right. Sorry. I keep forgetting. I just--can’t imagine.”

“It’s the only life I have known,” says Gamora, feeling oddly defensive. She doesn’t want him to feel sorry, doesn’t want him to pity her, though -- She can’t help remembering, suddenly, that he’s said the same thing of her. Still, even if it isn’t pity, she doesn’t like the idea of being the one to make him sad.

“Well not anymore,” says Peter, cupping his hand under hers, as though she might need assistance in supporting the feather-light weight of the candies. “Now you’re a Guardian and you get to eat any damn thing you want. So you should try it, and all the things. It’s basically an act of rebellion!”

She shakes her head but pops the candy into her mouth. It takes her a beat to even register the flavor, because the warm press of his hand seems to be overwhelming all the rest of her senses.

When the flavor comes it happens all at once, a veritable explosion in her mouth. It’s a flavor she’s never tasted before, sweet but somehow also--sharp. Almost acidic, but not. This must be sour. 

She chews it slowly and looks at Peter with wide eyes, not even caring that her enjoyment is clearly projected for him to see. “Are any of these other ones sour?” she asks, indicating the gummies in her hand. 

He looks pleased. “This one.” He points to the red one. “But not as much. It’s cool, though, it’s got liquid inside it that bursts in your mouth when you bite into it.”

She eats that one without question, making a little noise of delight when the burst happens. He was right, though; it’s not as sour as the first one. 

“More sour, please,” she requests as calmly as possible, which she suspects is not anywhere near her usual level of control. Besides chocolate, this is probably her favorite new flavor. It’s only an incredible amount of self-restraint that keeps her from requesting a whole bag’s worth of samples of it to eat now. 

Peter smirks. “Looks like we’ve found a winner.” 

He finally takes his hand off her, and the spot where it was definitely doesn’t feel colder now without it. He plays around with the screen some more, and by the time he’s done, a waterfall of gummies has cascaded down the tube, and Gamora is growing concerned about the bag’s ability to hold it all. 

“Perhaps we should get another,” she suggests, as he moves to take the bag off his shoulder. 

Peter glances at it, then grins. “You're so smart. We're definitely gonna need at least half a dozen bags.”

Gamora arches an eyebrow. “That seems like a very optimistic estimate when we are just now beginning our second.”

“Yeah,” he allows, still smiling. His expression had turned a bit conspiratorial now. “But we haven't even gotten to the chocolate yet.”

She laughs, pleasantly surprised. “All right, that is fair. But you should give me the first bag to hold.”

His grin is crooked now. “Oh, should I? For you to protect the candy? Are you gonna secure it in your mouth?”

Gamora rolls her eyes. “Because it is heavy and I am better suited to carry it. I would not want you to injure yourself.”

For a moment she thinks he's going to be offended, to get defensive about his Terran physique. Instead he just laughs again. “Candy chivalry by the Candy Warrior. Okay.” He hands the bag over. 

She takes it and slings it over her shoulder as if there’s nothing in it, noticing that Peter’s eyes linger on her as he does so. It takes him a few seconds to look away, and he fumbles with the empty bag rack for a moment when he goes to retrieve a new one. 

The warmth that spreads in her cheeks -- and her stubborn abdomen -- isn’t unpleasant. She has to work to hide a smile. 

He leads her to another section nearby: an extensive array of shelves that line one of the walls, full of clear jars. Most of the candies inside them appear to be pink, though they are various shapes and sizes. 

“Next up: gum!” Peter grins and gestures to them proudly. 

“Are they...similar to gummies?” she asks, because he seems to be waiting for some kind of reaction. 

“Well, they are chewie,” he says. “But you don’t swallow these ones.”

“So they are not to be eaten?” she asks, confused. What is the point of candy that you can’t eat?

“Nope,” he says, oddly cheerful. “You chew ‘em, then spit them out when you’re done!”

She wrinkles her nose; that sounds disgusting. “Why?”

“Because you blow bubbles!” he says enthusiastically. 

“I was not aware that blowing bubbles required ingesting something,” says Gamora. She’s never done anything so ridiculous herself, but she’s seen the merchants in Xandar’s more touristy areas, selling little bottles with the Nova logo on them to small eager children. She distinctly recalls those same children holding and blowing through small wands to make bubbles from a substance similar to soap.

“Well,” says Peter, considering this. “I guess technically there’s more than one way to blow bubbles. But gum is definitely a really fun way to do it. Also it has flavor!”

“I don’t know,” she says again. She doesn’t like things that are misleading, and a type of candy intended to be chewed but not ingested seems to be exactly that. “What happens if you do swallow it?”

He shrugs. “I dunno. Well...at school when I was a kid, people used to say if you swallowed your gum, it’d stay in your stomach for like...decades. And that if you swallowed enough, your stomach would fill up with gum and you’d starve to death. So naturally we dared each other to swallow it all the time.”

Her horror must show on her face, because he quickly adds, “That’s totally not true, though! I must’ve swallowed like fifty pieces of gum, and I’m fine! I mean, I got a stomach ache at the time, but I’m still alive.” 

“Then why did people say that it would kill you?” she asks, looking at the gum jars suspiciously.

He shrugs one shoulder. “I dunno. To keep kids from doing it, I guess. Which was probably a dumb idea.” He smirks. “One time Yondu said the best way to get to me to do something was to tell me not to do it.”

She believes that easily. “Perhaps that advice will come in handy with Groot one day,” she muses, thinking of how strong-willed he already is, despite only being a few weeks old. 

Peter snorts. “God, I hope not.” He runs his fingers over a few of the jars, appearing contemplative. “I was a little shit when I was...after I left Earth. I hope he’s easier.” 

“Well, he will not have to live with Ravagers,” Gamora points out. Or with Thanos, she thinks. Just the thought of any situation like that befalling the little tree -- who’s still in his pot, whose fist can barely wrap around her finger -- terrifies her.

“No,” Peter agrees, meeting her eyes. “No, he’s gonna have the most awesome parents in the galaxy. And the most awesome childhood.”

There’s that strange, surprising vulnerability in them again, and soft, fragile hope. He’s having the exact same thoughts she is, she realizes, and feels a fresh wave of warmth go through her. This one has nothing to do with aesthetics or sexual attraction, and everything to do with the rest of what the silver means. A life together, a family together, a child they are raising _together._ She feels a fresh thrill of fear at that, at the thought of Thanos getting his hands on Groot.

“I do not want to try the gum,” she says stiffly, because she needs to break that train of thought, but she also needs to stop thinking about anything approximating _love._ That is a thing she cannot have, ever. _That_ may be one thing Thanos taught her correctly.

She expects Peter to attempt to cajole her, to insist that she try it, that she’ll like it just like she’s liked every other type of candy. He considers her for a moment and she braces herself for such an attempt. 

But he’s still got that softness in his expression and his voice when he says instead, “Okay. We don’t have to. I’ll just get some that I like, and you can try it on the ship if you want to.” 

“I will not want to,” she says, but it sounds weak to her ears and he doesn’t respond. He just dumps an excessive amount of gum from several of the jars into the new bag. Gamora stands stiffly while she watches, oddly feeling both more and less comfortable at how easily he’d acquiesced to her wishes. It’s something she’s still unused to, despite how often Peter does so. 

Not for the first time -- not even for the first time _today_ \-- she wonders about the strange feelings he stirs inside her. 

“Hey,” he says, when he’s apparently gotten enough gum, “I know we said we’d save chocolate for last, but how about we head up there now? Get a break from this floor.” 

“Whatever you want,” she says casually, though the thought of chocolate makes her mouth water. 

“I want,” says Peter easily. “And I think you also want. So let’s do.”

“All right,” she agrees. Then she looks at the bag, which is already starting to bulge again between the gummies and the gum. She holds out a hand for it. “But give me that first.”

He grins. “How convenient that you’re continuing to position yourself so that you’ve got all the candy in your possession.”

Gamora rolls her eyes. “Which of us was the thief again?”

“Hey!” He feigns offense, theatrically clapping his hand over his heart. “Pirate, I’ll have you know. Or cowboy. Space cowboy.”

She arches an eyebrow and rests a hand on her hip, letting her expression speak for her.

“Also,” says Peter, “I seem to recall _you_ stealing my Orb.”

“Yours?” asks Gamora, taking a step closer. They probably shouldn’t be having this conversation in the middle of a busy store. Not when anyone could overhear. Not when she’s just been thinking of Thanos and danger, and...But she isn’t about to let him win this game, either. “You mean the one that _you_ stole to begin with?”

“Exactly!” he says, looking immensely pleased. “So we’re both thieves.”

She pokes him in the chest without even thinking about it, so easily that it might as well be something she does all the time. “Weren’t you the one who said it doesn’t count as stealing if what you’re taking was stolen to begin with?” That had been his justification for stealing from the Ravagers. 

He opens his mouth, then seems to rethink whatever it is he was going to say because he closes it again. She’s basking in the glory of being right when he finally manages, “Well--you just stole my reasoning! So, there: thief.” 

He’s smirking, and Gamora’s unsure whether he’s joking or actually satisfied that he’s just won with a perfect argument. Perhaps both. That smirk is absolutely infuriating but for some reason she can’t stop smiling, and suddenly she’s fighting a strong urge to kiss it off his face. 

She takes a step back to resist that urge, and only in doing so does she realize how close they were standing. She would have barely needed to move in order to act on her insane urge. 

“Bag, please,” she says, not quite meeting his eyes, sure that he’s going to be able to see what she’d wanted to do in them. 

“All right, all right,” he says easily, handing the bag over. She adds it to the one she’s already holding without effort. “But if half that candy’s missing when we get back to the ship, I’ll know who to blame.” Then he’s off, leading her through the store yet again. 

“That half would be rightfully mine,” she points out, following close behind him until the crowd thins enough that she can walk beside him again. 

“True,” he allows, “but do you really expect me to believe that you’d be content to just eat half now and then none again until my half was gone? Naw.”

“You are very confident of my hypothetical actions,” says Gamora. She ought to be annoyed -- no, _is_ annoyed, but she’s also still filled with that irritating warmth that comes from being close to him. And--yes, excitement. At being here. At what they’re about to do. Damn, the way she’s feeling about it, the chocolate might as well be sexual.

“Well yeah,” he says. They’ve reached the foot of the stairs that lead up to the chocolate level now, and he pauses. Apparently they need to finish this conversation first. “I mean, you might be the expert at Being Gamora, but I’m Candy-Lord, remember? And candy totally makes us behave in strange and unpredictable ways.”

She wrinkles her nose. “If the candy makes me lose my mind, I am blaming you.”

“Awesome!” says Peter, and throws his arm around her shoulders. “Onward to the chocolate!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and chapter 8 were originally supposed to be one chapter, but it got so freaking long we had to split it up, so sorry if the end seemed a bit abrupt!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember this chapter is part two to chapter 7! It picks up immediately after that one ends

Gamora glances between his face and the hand that’s suddenly draped over one of her shoulders. He’s grinning so easily, his face is so open and carefree and...affectionate. He’s also warm; his arm is warm around her, his chest is warm where she finds herself pressed against it. It feels weird and also--natural. Weird how natural it feels. Before Peter, she cannot recall the last time anyone has touched her gently.

“Are we going to walk up the stairs this way?” she asks, trying to keep her voice light. Can Terrans’ ears pick up heartbeats from this distance? She doesn’t think so. She hopes he can’t hear how quick hers has gotten. 

“Hey, if anyone can do it we can,” he says, shrugging. The movement jostles her slightly. 

Recalling how recently she saw him do any number of less than graceful things, including dropping a barbell on himself, she says, “So I will catch you if you fall, is your plan?”

“Exactly!” he says cheerfully. “Teamwork! This is how friends walk up stairs!”

They finally begin to ascend the rather long, spiralling staircase, going much slower than they would need to if they were walking normally. 

“Should I go find Drax so you can walk with him this way too?” she asks. Her grip is tight on the bags of candy. 

“No way!” says Peter, absolutely predictable.

“Is he not your friend?” Gamora teases, catching him as he misses a step and scuffs his toe. She’s pretty sure that’s because he’s looking sideways at her. 

“Of course he’s my friend!” he insists, grinning crookedly at her assistance. Then he glances around furtively, as though Drax might suddenly have appeared next to them on the stairs. As though Drax has ever appeared anywhere without making his presence abundantly known. He lowers his voice and leans closer to her, which makes him almost trip again. “But have you _seen_ him eat? If he knew about our candy stash, well...we wouldn’t have a candy stash.”

Gamora snorts at that. “You are awfully protective of your candy stash, Peter.”

“Well yeah!” he says, like that ought to have been obvious to her. “Candy is precious. Well worth protecting. Duh.”

And also, she thinks, he knows the pain of having precious things ripped away from him, of growing up with so much longing.

“I will protect it with the honor it is due,” she says solemnly, vowing that he will have nothing else taken away from him.

“I know,” he says, his smile gentle. He squeezes her shoulder, a warmth seeming to emanate from where he’s touched to the rest of her body; a ridiculous notion. She contemplates how she would slice off anyone else’s arm for attempting this level of familiarity with her; and how natural it feels for Peter to do it. 

“You may want to take up a constant guard over it when we add the chocolate,” he continues, gesturing grandly with his free arm once they’re high enough on the stairs that they can see the upper level they’re approaching. 

It’s only muscle memory that keeps Gamora putting one foot in front of the other as they continue their ascent, as her senses are once again overwhelmed by the sights and smells of this level, though in a much less dizzying way than the lower floor. 

This level is smaller, though not by much, and quieter. There are shelves everywhere, and a couple of dispensers similar to the ones downstairs, but there are also several counters serving a wider array of goods. And while the smells vary, they are all still unmistakably rich, sweet, sometimes bitter _chocolate_. 

“ _Oh,_ ” she murmurs, and is only dimly aware that it basically comes out as a moan. She should care about that, she really should, but she has a feeling that self-control is going to be in short supply around here. Even for her. Perhaps it is _very_ fortunate that she has never tasted chocolate before. She can only imagine the ways Thanos might have twisted it had he learned of such a profound weakness in her.

“Oh no!” says Peter, dropping his hand to the small of her back. He holds out his other arm like he’s preparing to catch her. “Are you gonna swoon? Do I need to get the Chocolate Doctor again?”

Gamora rolls her eyes at him, though she feels no shame at this reaction, at his noticing her reaction. That’s strange too, she thinks. Sharing something that feels so vulnerable.

“I do not swoon,” she tells him. “I am a warrior.”

“Right, right!” says Peter. “Candy Warrior. Well, Candy Warriors are allowed to swoon over chocolate, you know.” 

“I will never swoon,” she says flatly. Even though she’s surrounded by chocolate, and she kind of really wants to. 

“Not even over some proper hot chocolate?” Peter gestures to one of the many counters, which is advertising a variety of chocolate drinks, including the hot one. “It’s not _the_ best hot chocolate ever, we still gotta go to Krylor for that. But it’s at least not the kind made from water and an instant packet.” 

Gamora bites her lip to stifle another noise; she may be okay with Peter knowing some of her reactions here, but she doesn’t need to make a scene about it. 

“I would be willing to give it a try,” she says casually, her legs already carrying her quickly over to that counter. 

“Glad to hear it,” he says, after he’s caught up to her a few seconds later. They’re behind one other person in line, and Gamora watches, fascinated, as an employee pours liquid chocolate into a cup. 

“Oh, we can get little marshmallows in it!” Peter says eagerly. 

“Little what?” she asks, only half paying attention. 

“Marshmallows!” he repeats, as though she might only have failed to hear him. It’s the same thing he does so many times with references she doesn’t understand. It’s infuriating, though she also supposes she ought to see it as a vote of confidence.

She sighs. “What are marsh mellows?”

“They’re another kind of candy,” says Peter. “They’re like...little clouds, but they’re sweet. They melt in your mouth. And you put them in your hot chocolate.”

“Chocolate clouds?” she asks, trying to picture it. She’s imagining a type of candy that floats or levitates somehow. She’s certain Xandar has the technology to achieve such a thing, but they have yet to see anything like that in the shop. Perhaps up here…

“No, no,” he says. “They’re not chocolate. They’re just--they’re marshmallows. They go _with_ chocolate. Especially hot chocolate.”

He doesn’t give her a chance to respond, just goes up to the counter and orders two cups of hot chocolate ‘with extra marsh mellows.’

She’s practically drooling by the time they get the drinks, though it probably takes less than a minute. Really, she’s been on the edge of drooling since they ascended the stairs. The aroma of chocolate is even stronger now that she’s holding some in her hands, and she dearly wants to drink it, but she’s wary of the small white things floating on the surface. 

“Are these the marsh mellows?” she asks, though she’s fairly sure she knows. 

“Yep!” he says. “You should just drink the hot chocolate first, though. Then you eat them at the end, once they’ve soaked up a bunch of chocolate!”

“Why are they not simply chocolate from the beginning?” she asks. “That seems more efficient.” 

Peter’s face scrunches up, his exaggerated _thinking_ expression. “I dunno. I guess because this way is just more fun!” 

“All right,” she says, just a little skeptical but deciding to go with it. After all, he hasn’t steered her wrong on food yet. 

Despite this, she still hasn’t taken a sip of hers, even though Peter’s already got a line of chocolate along his upper lip. When she’s not staring at _that_ , she’s looking at the cup in her hand, imagining all the things Thanos and her siblings would say if they could see her now. 

“Everything okay?” Peter asks. 

“Yes,” she says quickly, trying to feign confidence. It’s not that she doesn’t _want_ the hot chocolate anymore, she definitely still does. And really that’s the problem, isn’t it? If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be having these thoughts.

“Y’know,” he says, regarding her over the rim of his cup, “I got really good at some things while I was with the Ravagers. You know what one of ‘em was?”

“Stealing?” she guesses. “Making hot chocolate?”

He grins. “Well yeah. But also lying. And you know what comes with being a good liar? Knowing when other people are not as good as you. And you, Candy Warrior, are not as good as me. So what’s bugging you?”

She sighs, irritated with herself. Though she has to admit, there’s also a small part of her that wants to share, though it feels dangerous all the same. She gives in to it, as she so often seems to around Peter. “I was just...thinking of how disappointed Thanos would be in me if he saw me now.”

“Oh.” His face falls for a moment before he brightens again. “Well that guy’s a giant douchebag, so disappointing him sounds like an awesome thing to do. If he was anti-candy, then eating it is basically an act of rebellion, right?”

She scoffs, though it’s half a laugh. He always makes it sound so simple, constantly underestimating Thanos’ threat and power. But she doesn’t blame him. It’s impossible to know how powerful Thanos is unless you know him, and she never wants Peter to have that kind of knowledge. 

She shakes her head before her thoughts can follow down that path; it leads only to darkness. She has defied Thanos before, in a far more significant way than eating chocolate or even escaping his clutches, and she knows that is going to come back to haunt her some day. 

But right now, perhaps, the simple rebellion of being happy is enough to shove those thoughts to the back of her mind. 

“Right,” she says, keeping her voice light. Peter, self-proclaimed expert detector of lies, can probably see through it, but he only smiles as she finally lifts the cup to her lips and takes a small sip. 

Then she stares; first at the liquid inside the cup, then at Peter, then the drink again. 

“Best tasting rebellion ever, huh?” he says. 

“I did not see how anything could be better than the hot chocolate you made,” she confesses. “But--” She shakes her head, unable to properly describe how wrong she was, how much _better_ this truly is. She wants to both drink it all at once and spread the enjoyment of it out through the rest of the day. 

“But it’s awesome!” Peter supplies, taking another long drink of his. He doesn’t have much left, apparently not suffering any of the same concerns that she is. Or perhaps he simply cannot discipline himself against how good this drink is. She doesn’t see how anyone can choose to excessively drink alcohol when hot chocolate exists.

“It is,” she agrees, taking another small sip. “I would like it to last all day.”

Peter considers this. “Well...it’s way better when it’s super hot like this. Plus, if you wait too long, the marshmallows will melt and it’s way more fun to chew them when they’ve soaked up the chocolate.”

“All right,” says Gamora, though she’s only half convinced. She takes another sip, a bit larger than the last one.

“Hey,” says Peter, putting a hand on her shoulder again, like he somehow senses she needs reassurance. Reassurance over chocolate, which is ridiculous. She doesn’t shrug him off, though. “We’re gonna buy a bunch of this. If you want, you can have a new cup every ten minutes. You don’t have to treat it like you’re never gonna have it again because you definitely are.”

“That sounds excessive,” she says stiffly, though she wouldn’t exactly say no to that. She doesn’t want to admit that he -- with irritating accuracy -- pinpointed her fear. 

“Nothing is too excessive when it comes to chocolate,” he informs her. He squeezes her shoulder, then grabs a bunch of packages that advertise themselves as _hot chocolate kits_ , tossing many handfuls of them into a bag. These ones have real chocolate inside of them rather than the packets of powder he’d used in the hotel. 

“Besides,” he continues, as he shoves so many packages into the bag that she begins to wonder if they will need yet another one. “You gotta make sure you can try all the other kinds of chocolate up here!” He gestures vaguely around this floor. “I bet there’s some stuff here you’re gonna like even better than the hot chocolate.” 

“I do not see how that is possible either,” she says, taking another, longer sip. 

“Well, you were wrong once,” he says cheerfully. She makes a noise of acknowledgment; he is correct. She normally dislikes being wrong, but in this case, she has a feeling she wouldn’t mind. 

“I suppose it happens on occasion,” she allows. She takes another sip of the hot chocolate and this time some gets stuck to her lower lip so that she has to lick it off.

Peter stares at that for a beat, then clears his throat. “Yeah! I mean, yeah. I’m wrong on occasion too. Very rare occasion, but it does happen.”

Gamora rolls her eyes. “What is next?”

He looks around thoughtfully. “Well, over there is chocolate with things in it. Stuffed chocolate, if you will.” He gestures to another counter, then the one beside it. “And that one is chocolate-covered fruit.”

“Stuffed chocolate?” she asks, taking another sip of the hot chocolate and trying to picture it. She’s getting close to the bottom now, enough so that she can see the marsh mellows again. They’ve kind of clumped together now and they look softer in a way that she’s not sure is appealing. 

“Yeah,” he continues, unperturbed. “Like...chocolate with nuts in it. Oh! Or other types of candy in it. Some of it has spices in it, or little crunchy bits. Those are my favorites.”

“The crunchy kind?” she asks, having difficulty picturing it. 

He nods. “Yeah, reminds me of this chocolate bar I used to get on Earth. It was the best one.” 

“So your favorite chocolate is really Terran chocolate?” she asks, unable to keep the affection out of her voice. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Because Terran chocolate is the best,” he says simply. “But this stuff is good too!” He heads over to the ‘stuffed chocolate’ counter, apparently having made the decision, and she follows him, continuing to drink on the way. 

“Do these have samples?” she asks, hoping they do. Rather than satisfy her desire for chocolate, this drink has somehow only thrown fuel on the fire, made her want _more_. 

“Well, sorta,” Peter says, tracing his finger along some of the open shelves next to the display case. 

“No stealing,” she hisses, immediately wary. 

“I wasn’t gonna,” he laughs. “How dare you, honestly--how you could even think such a thing of me--” He trails off at her glare. “Fine, fine. They do have samples, but not like downstairs. You have to buy a sample box, and that’s got one of everything. So this will have all the kinds of stuffed chocolate.” He taps on a large box on the shelf he’d been touching. “So we should probably do that. Unless you wanna just buy a mountain load of everything. Which I wouldn’t be opposed to.” 

“No,” says Gamora. “We should -- We should practice _some_ modicum of self-control.”

Peter feigns shock. “Self-control? You? I never would have guessed!”

She rolls her eyes. “We will get a sample box.”

He grins and snaps her a salute. “Yes ma’am.”

She opens her mouth to respond but doesn’t get a chance; he’s already grabbed the box off the shelf and taken it up to the counter to pay. Gamora watches him from a distance, as he smiles and jokes easily with the cashier. She wonders for a moment whether she will ever be able to exist so casually in a public space, or whether that sort of softness has been irrevocably trained out of her. 

“Let’s go sit!” says Peter, when he returns with the box and a couple of bottles of water. He gestures toward a small area to one side with tables and chairs. “We need to be able to concentrate properly on our tasting.”

Gamora glances anxiously at the number of people who are already occupying tables, but they all seem distracted by purchases of their own. She nods, and decides to trust Peter as she follows him over to an empty table.

This table has two chairs, and it’s the farthest away from other people but still closer than she’d like. She sits down in one of the chairs, and Peter sets the box down on the table but doesn’t sit down immediately. Instead, he’s looking off to the side at the other counter they’ve sat near.

“You know what?” he says. “I’m gonna go grab the sample box from that place too! Then we can have both at once and we won’t have to do this same thing again. Don’t start without me!”

Then he’s off before she’s got a chance to respond, leaving her alone with the box. 

She blinks at the spot where he was just standing for a moment, reminding herself that she doesn’t need him to be next to her constantly in this place. She pulls the box a little closer to her to guard it better, throwing glances to the tables on either side of her. None of them are paying attention to her, except for a little Aakon baby who probably just hasn’t seen any green species before. 

Still, she ducks her head, letting her hair fall around her face as a curtain just in case, staring at the table until Peter finally returns, laying another box next to this one. 

“Okay, got it!” he says proudly. Gamora’s barely able to resist the urge to drool; this box is emanating the best thing she’s smelled so far, in a store full of incredible smells. 

“What next?” she asks, trying to sound casual about it. She swallows hard, her mouth watering.

“Well,” says Peter, sitting opposite her, then leaning in to peer into her cup. “It looks like you got down to the marshmallows finally! You should try those before they cool off too much! Then we can move on to the samples.”

“Oh.” She’s nearly managed to forget about them in her excitement to try the new samples, particularly the newest box that she can still _smell_ so strongly. She glances into her own cup the way he just has, looking skeptically at the brown and white mass at the bottom of the cup. “That does not look particularly appetizing.”

“But it is!” he says brightly. “Come on, give it a try.” He leans in a bit more, tone clearly cajoling now. “Besides, you said that same thing when I first made you hot chocolate, remember? You called it mud water.”

“Dirt water,” she mumbles distractedly, hesitating as she looks into the cup. She reaches for it, but thinks that can’t be right; her fingers would get so sticky. “How am I supposed to get this out?” 

“Just tip it back into your mouth like you’re drinking it!” Peter says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. 

She looks at him skeptically, and he picks up his own cup. “I still got mine too, see?” And he demonstrates, tilting his head back and tapping on the bottom of the cup, apparently to dislodge the marsh mellow mess. Then he faces her again, grinning widely around a large mouthful. 

“All right,” she sighs. Her desire for more chocolate outweighs her knowledge of how ridiculous she must look as she mirrors his movements. The marsh mellows overfill her mouth but she manages, making a small, pleased noise when the flavor hits her tongue. 

They’re a strange texture, and not as good as the chocolate on its own, but still very good. She tells him as much after she swallows. 

“So basically,” he says, “you gotta listen to all my food opinions from now on, because I’m never wrong.” 

“I don’t know,” she says, eyeing the boxes. “I think I require more evidence.” 

“Oh, do you now?” asks Peter, his grin turning mischievous. “I haven’t presented you with enough already?”

“Definitely not,” says Gamora, leaning back in the chair and crossing her arms. She shakes her hair back, the self-consciousness melting away again as she focuses solely on him and this game that they appear to be playing. She can’t explain it, but it’s magnetic, simultaneously exciting and a bit dangerous in a way unlike anything she’s experienced before in her life.

“Well,” he says, turning his familiar charm up to its full effect, “I happen to have lots of that right here.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Are you going to show it to me or are you just going to keep talking about it?”

Peter laughs, opening the first box of samples, the one he’d left in her possession while going to procure the second. He sweeps his hand over the chocolates inside, like a salesman showing off wares. Then he selects a heart-shaped chocolate that has red sprinkles on top, holding it delicately out to her. “We’ll start with this one! To me, the filling tastes like this Earth stuff called cinnamon.”

She takes a delicate bite, which is still half of it considering how small it is. The filling inside is a thick liquid and it sits on her tongue. 

“It’s good,” she says, which is an understatement. She eats the other half. “But not as good as the hot chocolate.”

“Oh, is that the challenge?” he asks, happiness in his tone. “I gotta find one you like more than the hot chocolate?”

“You did promise me that such a thing exists,” she reminds him. 

He shakes his head, smiling. “You’re right. Okay, well, this is the crunchy one.” He hands her a rectangular one, thinner than the previous one but longer too. 

“This one is your favorite?” she asks. He nods. She breaks this one in half, handing one of the pieces to him. His smile softens and she can’t help but return it. 

She pops it in her mouth, unable to contain a noise of pleasure as she chews. The texture is interesting, good; it somehow makes the chocolate taste better, though she can discern no actual flavor from the crunchy bits themselves. 

“It is very close,” she allows. 

“Okay, okay, hmm…” His hand hovers over the box, fingers wiggling as he contemplates his next selection. 

“Wait,” says Gamora, noticing that he still hasn’t eaten his own piece of crunchy chocolate. He’s holding it between two fingers in his free hand, and she can see that it’s melting a bit.

Peter glances up, looking equal parts surprised and a bit concerned. “What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing. Just--That one is your favorite.” She nods toward the chocolate in his hand. “You should enjoy it before you continue offering me samples.” 

Peter’s face softens even more, so much that for a moment she thinks he might cry or something else _really_ sappy. Instead he nods and pops the chocolate into his mouth, closing his eyes in an expression of absolute bliss as he crunches down on it. For those few seconds, she sees the boy that he was once -- carefree, sweet, happy. _Home._ It makes her own chest ache in a way that she can’t quantify. He licks his fingers and makes a soft happy sound, then gives her a smile that seems to warm her entire body.

“Delicious,” he says, still smiling. Then, after a moment, he continues, “Are you ready to try some more?” 

Heat floods her cheeks as she realizes she’s just been staring at him without saying anything, and she tears her eyes away from that gentle, happy expression on his face. “Yeah--yes. What is next?”

“Uh, how bout this one?” He picks up a round one and holds it out for her. “This one is salty!” 

She inhales sharply as she chews it, slowly so she can savor it. “A tie, perhaps, with the hot chocolate.” It might actually beat it, but she is not going to admit that he’s won. 

“Oh, this is a challenge,” Peter says, apparently pleased about that. “Okay, how about...this one!” He holds out a square one, thin and with little dots of red in it. “This one is spicy. Do you like spicy stuff?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she says, taking it and biting into it without hesitation, which she quickly learns was a mistake. 

At first it just tastes like regular chocolate--regular, delicious chocolate. But then suddenly there’s a burning sensation in the back of her throat. She clutches at her neck, looking down at the other half of the piece in horror. Coughing does nothing to dispel the sensation. 

Peter looks instantly alarmed, jumping up and knocking his chair back with a loud scrape, as though that might accomplish anything other than just getting everybody in the damn place to stare at them. 

“Whoa, hey!” he says sharply, his voice just as panicked as his actions. “Gamora, can you breathe? Are you choking? I can go get help--”

She coughs once more and reaches out lightning quick, catching his forearm and holding onto it tightly. “Don’t you dare,” she hisses, though her mouth and throat are still on fire.

“Okay,” says Peter. “Okay, okay. You can talk, so that’s good. That means you’re not choking, right?”

“No,” she agrees, then grabs one of the bottles of water and downs half of it in a few very large gulps. Her face is on fire every bit as much as her mouth now, every cell in her body smoldering with shame as it registers that not only has Peter seen this ridiculous display of weakness, but so has everyone else in the store.

“ _Sit down_ ,” she hisses, keeping her eyes only on him or the table so she doesn’t have to look around and see everyone else staring at her, judging her for her failing. 

He obeys but he still looks very concerned. “Maybe this isn’t the kind I was thinking of,” he says. Then he reaches over and takes the remainder of the chocolate out of her hand and pops the rest of it in her mouth. 

“Peter!” she says, too loud in her alarm despite how worried she is about drawing attention to them. She suddenly understands his impulse to stand up in his concern as she almost does so herself, wanting to be ready to assist him. She stays seated, though, and watches him closely. If that was _her_ reaction to the spice, she cannot imagine how a fragile Terran is going to react. 

His reaction is nothing like she’d have imagined even if she’d tried. He makes a face as he chews, like he’s not particularly enjoying it, but there’s no choking, no coughing; no dramatics. Just a nose wrinkled in distaste. 

“That’s pretty spicy,” he says, perhaps to placate her. But she only blushes deeper. It is not an inherent property of the spice, then, that caused her reaction; just her own weakness. 

“Not that spicy,” says Gamora, her tone now full of disgust not for the chocolate, but for herself. This is why she doesn’t try new things, especially in public. It’s just too vulnerable, too apt to show her new and interesting ways to disappoint and embarrass herself. 

“Pretty spicy!” he repeats, though he’s clearly trying to placate her now. He hasn’t even appeared to consider taking a drink of water.

Meanwhile, she takes another gulp, her throat still stinging a bit. She swallows hard. “You do not have to lie to me. I don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity!” he says immediately, predictably. “I mean, I told you stuff used to make me sick all the time, right? When I was new to space. You’re not new to space, but unless they’ve made some kinda super seasoned ration bars I don’t know about, you _are_ new to spice.” He considers that for a beat, then snorts. “Oh hey, a pun.”

“What?” she asks, confusion overtaking some of her shame. “How is that a pun?”

“Cause--new to space, new to spice!” he says. He waves both of his hands in a manner that is presumably supposed to indicate something dazzling has just occured. “They’re like, the same words. So. Pun.” 

“Was your first reaction to first tasting spicy food to nearly choke?” she asks disdainfully, ignoring the attempted humor. 

“No, but my first reaction to Centaurian root bread was to throw up neon green for two days,” he says. 

She wrinkles her nose. “That is disgusting.”

“The bread or the puke?” he asks, smirking. “No, don’t answer, it’s both.”

“Root bread has almost no flavor,” she says. 

“And yet, it nearly dehydrated me,” he says with a shrug. “Point is, we’re all sensitive to different stuff. Maybe your people can’t tolerate spice.”

“I cannot ever know,” she says bluntly. “My modifications have changed so much of me.”

“Oh.” Peter blinks. “So it could be your enhancements too, then.”

“I cannot know,” she repeats, frustrated with herself and her body and parts of her body that are betraying her. 

“I’m sorry,” says Peter, reaching out and putting a hand over one of hers on the table. For a moment she thinks he’s apologizing for giving her that chocolate, or maybe for bringing her here in the first place, and she’s about to remind him how she feels about pity. But then he surprises her yet again, because that seems to be one of the few constants about him. “I’m sorry the asshole took that away from you.”

Gamora snorts softly, more in shock than anything else. “I have never heard anyone dare to call Thanos that.”

“Well,” Peter says thoughtfully, “it’s really not the most original insult. You should tell me what he looks like, then I can come up with some _real_ creative ones.”

She shakes her head, feeling a fresh wave of dread. “I do not want to think about him right now.”

“Okay,” he agrees easily. “You’re right, this is totally the wrong place for it. But keep it in mind!”

As she often has trouble keeping Thanos _out_ of her mind, she doesn’t anticipate that being an issue. She elects not to tell Peter that.

“Here, let’s move onto the fruit!” he says after a beat, closing this box and moving the second one on top of it. “Get that spicy taste out of your mouth!”

“Okay,” she says, tensing slightly at the mention of her weakness. That’s forgotten quickly when he opens the box, and she has to grip the table to keep from moaning at the increased strength of the smell emanating from it. She already knows she likes fruit, from the rare occasions she’s been able to have some. Fruit smells combined with the smell of chocolate is a delight she could not have anticipated. She can’t imagine the taste. 

The last time she had fruit was when she was tracking the Orb down. She used it to appear casual while waiting for Peter outside the Broker’s. She doesn’t expect him to remember that, doesn’t know why he would, but to her surprise, the first fruit he picks out is an ippufruit, drizzled in something white. 

“You were eating this when we first met!” he says, immediately disproving her theory that perhaps his choice was a coincidence. “Without the white chocolate, I’m guessing.” 

“If there had been white chocolate then,” says Gamora, trying to hide her surprise with feigned aloofness, “I would not have told you that I had never tasted chocolate before.”

“True!” says Peter, in a tone that says he clearly already knew that. He chooses not to say as much in words, though. “I _did_ respond to a chocolate emergency at your...well, not your home, but your vacation quarters.”

“You did,” she allows. Then she reaches out and takes the ippufruit from him, holding it delicately as she examines it and tries to imagine what it will taste like combined with chocolate. “You are certain this is a good combination?” She’s a bit wary now in the wake of the spice.

“Absolutely!” he promises. “I mean, white chocolate isn’t exactly _real_ chocolate. It has like...less flavor, I guess? It’s just kinda sweet and creamy, none of the bitterness. But it pairs well with the ippufruit.”

She laughs, surprised and pleased by the ease of it. “You sound like a chocolate connoisseur.”

He shrugs. “Candy connoisseur? You got the best in the galaxy right here, baby!”

“Baby?” she mumbles, but her irritation is mostly for show. 

He lifts his hands in surrender, smiling. “Just a word. And there’s nothing chocolate wouldn’t go good with. Except for spice, of course.” 

She makes a noncommittal noise. “If you say so.” Finally, the smell is too much to resist any longer and she takes a bite of the fruit, chewing slowly. 

It takes longer than it should for her to be able to form words. “I do not like to admit it,” she says, staring down at the remainder of the fruit, “but you were correct.”

“I know,” Peter says smugly. He takes the other half of the fruit when she offers it, though it takes every bit of her considerable willpower to do so. She has to remind herself that they can get more, and they are definitely going to; caution and being undeserving be damned, that is the best thing she’s ever tasted. 

“That was better than the hot chocolate,” she says, not even caring that she’s given up the challenge to him. “And you were correct about the white chocolate, as well.”

“There’s a couple different kinds, actually,” he says, pointing at a few different examples in the box. “This one is covered in light chocolate.” He picks up a fruit she doesn’t recognize, a long, red one. “It’s the kind most chocolate stuff is made with. On Xandar, anyway. It seems pretty universal, though.” 

“Light chocolate?” she asks, a bit skeptical. It does look to be the most common one, vaguely the same color as the hot chocolate. The name still sounds silly though, because it’s considerably darker than the white version. Unless, of course, one doesn’t consider that to be chocolate at all. “As opposed to what? Heavy chocolate? Dark chocolate?”

“Dark chocolate!” Peter affirms, his enthusiasm for all of this still utterly unwavering. It’s amazing to her how _happy_ he can be despite everything, despite all of the losses and tragedies in his life that have clearly affected him deeply. She doesn’t think that part’s an act; there’s just some kind of light in him that refuses to be dimmed. Perhaps it’s all of the light chocolate he’s consumed, she thinks, and almost laughs at her own joke.

“C’mon!” he cajoles, waggling the fruit he’s holding at her. “It’s not dark chocolate but we’ll get to that next! This one’s called a xesfos. Have you had it before?”

She shakes her head and bites back the urge to tell him that of course she hasn’t. She _has_ , after all, tasted ippufruit before.

“It’s good!” says Peter. “Kinda like an Earth fruit called a banana.”

“Did you like that fruit?” she asks, examining the fruit more closely. It is soft, but the chocolate has hardened, an intriguing combination. 

“Yeah, it’s pretty good, for not being candy or mac and cheese,” he says with a half-shrug. 

“Mac and cheese?” she asks. 

“We’ll add that to the list of stuff you have to try,” he says. “There’s some pretty similar stuff out here. But first--” He points to the fruit she’s still holding. 

“Yes.” She takes a large bite, letting herself have more of this one in her eagerness, and cannot hold the moan in. Her voice is scarcely more than a breath when she says, “How does it keep getting better?”

“Cause it’s good fruit and good chocolate!” Peter says happily. 

“It is so sweet,” she says, still marveling at it. She’s never had this much sweetness in her life put together. It is only because it’s Peter who’s giving it to her that she can bring herself to hand him the other half of this fruit. 

Watching him smile as he eats it is almost as rewarding as eating it herself. 

“Almost as good as Earth fruit,” he says, before he’s finished chewing. 

“It is still difficult to believe anything could be better than this,” she admits. “But you keep proving me wrong.” 

“I am _very_ good at that,” says Peter. He does that not-quite-obnoxious eyebrow waggle thing at her. “It’s a Star-Lord specialty.”

Gamora arches an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean Candy-Lord?”

He grins. “I thought you might say that! But no. Candy-Lord is very specific. Specific to candy, as you might imagine. Star-Lord specialties are more diverse.”

“Ah,” says Gamora, as though he’s just told her the most enlightening truth in the whole galaxy. She has a momentary flash of the Collector telling them about the Infinity Stones and has to bite down on a slightly insane laugh. “So you prove people wrong on a wide variety of things?”

“Yeah!” he agrees. “Like dancing, for instance. Gonna change your mind on that one next.”

“Oh, are you?” she asks, a bit of a challenge in her voice. She has to admit, though, that she’s feeling far more open to any of his suggestions than she was a mere couple of weeks ago. 

“Absolutely,” says Peter. “But first, you gotta try one more kind of fruit.” He reaches into the box again and picks up a mostly round piece of fruit that’s obscured entirely by a thick layer of chocolate. “This beauty is an azalon berry. It tastes like an Earth strawberry, except more tart. Also! This is dark chocolate.”

“Is the only difference that it is darker in color?” she asks, examining it curiously. 

“Nah, it tastes different too,” he says. He twists the fruit around by the stem. She can see a hint of the bright blue flesh of the fruit underneath it before the chocolate starts. “It’s like...richer. A little less sweet. But still sweet. And it goes super good with the azalon.”

“And you think this one is the best?” she asks. She takes it when he offers it to her, examining it more closely. 

“Well, I like light chocolate the best,” he tells her. “But I bet this one will be _your_ favorite.” 

“I trust you,” she says, before she can talk herself out of it. She does, and he should know it. 

“Good,” he says, with a gentle, sweet smile. “I trust you, too.”

She forces herself to look away. As much to distract herself from that smile, as well as from actual eagerness to have more chocolate, she takes a large bite. She has to chew for a few seconds before the full flavor really hits her, and when it does she nearly drops the rest of the azalon. 

She inhales sharply through her nose. Her brain is barely able to get the message to her jaw to keep chewing, and even then it’s a near thing. She looks between Peter and the fruit, her fingers trembling slightly, her breath quickening and embarrassment welling up as she finds that she can’t control the water gathering in her eyes. 

She can’t say why she’s crying, can’t quantify or articulate it. It’s almost an alien feeling, it’s been so long since she’s allowed herself anything resembling this sort of release, much less in front of another person. But it hits her as strongly as the spice did, though in an entirely different way. Her entire being seems to ache with it for an instant that seems to stretch out, frozen in time. It’s bliss and pain and longing all at once, simultaneously the best thing she’s ever experienced and a reminder of all the good things that she’s lost.

“You okay?” Peter asks, reaching across the table to catch an escaped tear on the pad of his thumb. His skin is warm against hers, and she doesn’t flinch away, doesn’t push his hand back. 

“Yes,” she whispers, sniffling once. She swipes at her eyes, then swallows. Her instincts are screaming at her to deny that reaction, to come up with some sort of excuse that isn’t honest, that isn’t vulnerable. But she already knows she isn’t going to do that. “It’s just-- _good._ ”

“Was it--too much?” he asks. He lowers his hand, only to cover her free one, the one not holding onto the azalon with a shaky grasp. “Too much at once?”

“No--yes.” She shakes herself. “Not in a bad way. It’s...it’s more than I deserve. But I love it.” 

“Oh,” he says softly. He’s stroking the back of her hand, which she should mind, but she doesn’t. It feels nice. “It’s way, way less than you deserve, ‘Mora.”

She ignores that nickname, that endearment she would allow no one else, which she should also mind. It should make her bristle at the familiarity, the comfort and--affection it displays. But instead it warms her, like his touch on her hand. 

She just shakes her head, wiping her cheeks with the back of her fruit-holding hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She glances around furtively, trying to see if any of the strangers around are looking at her, ready to use this display of weakness against her somehow, but none of them seem to be paying attention. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Peter says gently. “The only thing that’s wrong is that you haven’t had this before. But we’re fixing that! We’re gonna get you a whole case of these.”

“Where will we put all of this?” asks Gamora, suddenly worried about the amount of space this candy stash is going to occupy. It’s not as though the Milano is particularly large for their combined occupancy. Having a bunk of her own, a safe space to sleep, had seemed so much already.

“Well…” Peter grins, and this time it’s decidedly crooked, the look she’s coming to recognize as the expression he gets when he’s about to do something mischievous, as well as something he perceives to be exceedingly suave. “There might be...some hidden compartments on the Milano that I haven’t exactly told you guys about yet. I thought maybe the Nova Corps would get rid of them when they rebuilt, but they kept the full design just the way it was.”

“Hidden compartments?” she asks, studying him. He’s clearly implying something, but she isn’t sure exactly what. She doesn’t want to guess, either. She’s already embarrassed herself far more than enough for one day. 

“Yeah!” he says brightly, apparently eager to explain. Perhaps he was even being cryptic on purpose so that she would give him the opportunity. “You know, for...some of the less legal stuff I might have had to transport on Ravager jobs. Plus it made me feel very Han Solo.”

“The one from Star Wars?” she asks, hoping she’s remembering right. “You favorite?”

Peter’s smile grows. “The only outlaw who’s _maybe_ as cool as me.”

“And he had compartments to store chocolate?” she asks. 

“Probably!” he says. “Or he could have at least. He had them to smuggle stuff, but people could fit in them, so he totally had room for chocolate in there.”  
“And the ones on the Milano are large enough as well?” she asks hopefully.

“Totally!” he says. “It’s probably about time I tell you where they are. You keep trying these!” 

He gestures to the box and she reaches for it herself this time, selecting a piece of chocolate to try, and listens as Peter launches into a longer list than she’d have anticipated. She eats her chocolate, and lets herself watch, without chastising herself for doing so, his face grow more and more animated as he talks. Perhaps it’s okay to indulge herself, sometimes.


	9. Chapter 9

Her dreams have been featuring the gym lately.

Perhaps it’s the fact that she’s begun sparring with Peter -- Not much of a challenge for her, but he _needs_ better instruction on how to protect himself in hand-to-hand combat, how to use every asset of his comparatively weak physique in situations where he might not have access to blasters or jet packs. Plus she finds his company enjoyable, though definitely _not_ for the fact that she gets to touch him, often when he’s not wearing a shirt. 

Or perhaps her subconscious is trying to offer commentary on the amount of candy she’s been eating lately, the fact that some of the familiar sharp lines of her body are beginning to soften the slightest bit. Perhaps her subconscious is not quite ready to let her accept the fact that she likes the way she looks more now.

Regardless, this dream starts like the last few have: Gamora is in the gym, the equipment all packed up out of the way. She’s standing opposite Peter, who’s wearing nothing but boxer shorts that happen to be patterned with images of tiny gummy candies. He’s in the defensive stance she’s been trying to teach him, but neither of them has made a move yet, the tension so thick it’s palpable in the air.

“ _What are you waiting for?_ ” he asks, his voice sounding soft, almost far away in the thick air. He’s got that dumb smirk on his face, the one that always threatens to make her smile, makes something warm flow through her. “ _Come and get me. I’m all yours._ ” 

She’s suddenly standing even closer to him than she was and she’s throwing a punch, but with none of her strength, no desire to actually hurt him. He manages to block it, but not the kick she uses to sweep his legs out from under him, throwing him onto his back. 

He lands on the mat beneath them. It looks a lot plusher than usual; more like a mattress than a sparring mat. He makes no effort to get up, just lies there staring up at her, still with that smirk on his face. His chest is heaving even though they’ve been doing this for all of five seconds. As she looks down at him, she realizes that hers is doing the same thing. 

She also realizes that suddenly it’s very important that she pin him there, even though he’s not trying to get up. She’s got to teach him to press his advantage in a fight, after all. 

That doesn’t explain why she does it so slowly, though; why she leans over him first, hovering above him, then lowers herself to straddle his hips. Her hands pin his arms to the mat, her face inches from his. 

Peter rakes his eyes over her, making that stupid gaping fish face for a moment, as though he can’t believe what’s just happened, though she manages to pin him every time they do this. True, she’s never done it quite like this before, has never allowed herself to fully straddle his hips, to press the full weight of her body against his, but...Then his gape turns into a grin, and she forgets entirely where that train of thought was trying to go.

“What?” she asks, trying to be irritated. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to get pinned this fast, even against her. The fact that it’s happened shows that he hasn’t been using the techniques she’s been trying to teach him, has been wasting her time. And he’s _grinning_ after losing to boot. Yet somehow all she can feel is the warmth spreading through her abdomen and up to her chest, the flush that has nothing to do with the exertion of a workout. 

“Come and get me,” Peter says again, his voice still soft but filled with unmistakable heat. 

“I already got you,” Gamora retorts. Then she leans down and kisses him without another thought.

He might have had a response to that, but it’s muffled against her lips. He doesn’t seem to mind, judging by the enthusiastic way he kisses her back, arching off the mat to try to press closer to her. She slides her hands up his arms to grasp his hands instead. She’s still holding him down, but it’s less of a pin now and more...intimate. 

Her mind seems to get hazy, a little foggy, like the thick air in the room has seeped into her mind, making it impossible to focus on anything besides Peter. Even then, it’s not so much focusing as it is--feeling. Everything is sensation; everything is Peter. Time quickens and slows, speeding by and then refocusing at intervals.

She blinks and suddenly she’s kissing his neck, holding both his hands above his head with one of hers while he moans. Again and her shirt is off, his hands somehow free and cupping her breasts, making her rock against him. Again and they’re both naked, his hands on her hips as she lines herself up and slides down, watching the muscles in his shoulders and neck strain as he tilts his head back, his mouth open on a long, low groan. 

This is as far as her dreams have ever taken her before. 

For a moment she waits for this one to end too, waits to wake up flushed and gasping, her sheets soaked through with futile sweat. In this moment she’s acutely aware that it _is_ a dream, that it has to be a dream because this could never be her reality. Even if she wanted it. Even if _he_ wanted it. But this dream is sweet, and it continues.

Peter’s hands find her hips, big and gentle and warm. His thumbs stroke her hip bones in tandem as he guides her, helps her find a rhythm that he can meet. She’s never done this before even in dreams but it’s easy, natural, _right._

She reaches out with one hand, keeping balanced on her other, and runs her fingers through the patch of hair on his chest, the one she’s thought about touching so many times. It’s soft under her fingers for a moment, much softer than she expected -- and then she realizes that it’s fading away until his skin is just as smooth as hers. She doesn’t have time to consider that, though, because now his hands are exploring her body too, tracing over the silver that he seems just to have noticed.

She shivers and moans at that contact, the heady fog that seems to surround and penetrate them intensifying, thickening until she can scarcely do more than rock her hips. 

The next part is a blur, an explosion of pleasure that she _knows_ is happening more than _feels_ happening. Everything is swirling around her, nothing in her environment clear until she’s lying fully against Peter, both of their chests heaving, his arms around her. 

“I love you,” she whispers into his neck. She feels content and safe and--

The blink of an eye, and it’s all gone. Well, she is still there, and so is Peter, but it’s different. The images are no longer foggy, but crystal clear, almost harsh in their sharpness. She and Peter are still in the gym area of the Milano, but they’re fully dressed, and Peter is at the bench press, lifting weights. She goes over to him, wanting to help him, to spot him, but he looks up at her, none of that usual warmth in his gaze, and says that he doesn’t need her. 

She blinks again and she’s in the cockpit, sitting in his chair. She turns around because he’s climbing up the ladder… Only to climb back down as soon as he sees her. 

“Wait!” she calls, jumping to her feet. She stumbles uncharacteristically, her limbs feeling heavy and simultaneously numb. All of her blood seems to be pounding in her ears, feeding the panic that’s racing through her. She needs to talk to him, she knows, though she has no idea what she’ll say if she actually manages it. She just knows that she needs to, scrambles across the cockpit though she strikes her knee painfully on one of the levers that’s been left sticking out, almost like a trap. “Wait!”

He’s already gone by the time she gets to the ladder, though. Somehow vanished entirely on a ship too small for any amount of privacy or space.

When she finds him again, he’s sitting on his bunk, an indeterminate amount of time later. Everything feels surreal again, liminal, soft around the edges. 

Well, everything except the anxiety roiling in the pit of her stomach.

“Peter,” says Gamora, though she still doesn’t know what she actually intends to say. He’s wearing his headphones and he doesn’t look up, so she tries again, louder. “Peter!”

When he still doesn’t respond, she reaches out, touches his shoulder lightly. 

Peter flinches back, slapping her hand away and glaring up at her. He lifts one side of his headphones the slightest bit. “D’you mind? Kinda busy here.”

She barely has time to register surprise, can’t even begin to formulate a response to that, not that she’d know what to say, before Peter is standing up. He goes right through her as if she’s not there, but she must be, because he tells her, “I’m leaving.”

“Leaving?” she asks. Her voice sounds far away, or like it’s being carried through water rather than air. She follows him back into the main part of the ship. “To go where?”

“Just leaving,” he says. He stops, and his expression makes her blood run cold; he looks so unlike himself. There’s none of that warmth that she’s come to cherish in him. “I don’t _do_ this.” He points at her, then at himself. 

“What is _this_?” she asks, though she already knows with a certainty, a dread that’s been in her chest maybe all along.

“I don’t see the people I sleep with after,” he says bluntly. “I gotta go.” 

Then he’s gone, but not through the hatch; he’s disappeared, along with the Milano, and suddenly she’s in a small escape pod, drifting away from him and the ship. Somehow she is the one who left, which makes sense; it’s Peter’s ship. She’s lost Peter, she’s lost the team, the only good things she’s had since her home was destroyed, and now she’s drifting, alone in space -- 

She wakes up with a gasp so pained it’s almost a cry. Her heart is pounding in her chest, faster and harder than she’s felt in a long time -- perhaps since Thanos modified it. She has the panicked, crazed thought that the others are going to hear it, going to know what she’s dreamed. That she’s going to somehow ruin things just by existing, just as she had in the nightmare.

“Gamora!” comes Peter’s voice from just outside the privacy field, and she jumps so hard that she hits her head on the bulkhead. It aches immediately, but she doesn’t rub at it, just lets the pain roll through her.

She sits frozen for another couple of beats, all of the same thoughts running through her head again. He’s here, and the dream is going to come true, he’s going to tell her that he’s leaving or worse yet that _she_ needs to leave--

“Gamora!” he says again, louder and more urgently. “You there? You okay?”

“I was asleep,” she snaps, channeling the fear into anger. She’s learned to be an expert in that. She gives him her best glare as she deactivates the field.

He looks only half-awake himself, but definitely worried. He runs a hand through his hair, making it stand out at insane angles, somehow magnifying the shadows under his eyes. “Yeah, well, we all were but Drax says he needs you right now.”

“What?” she asks, her brain taking a second to catch up. She’s still disoriented from the dream, and from seeing Peter again right after it. He’s wearing a shirt at least, but only boxers, as he’s obviously only just woken up. 

A little ways off, she hears muffled cursing, followed by Rocket yelling, “Somebody better be flargin’ dying, Drax!” 

That snaps her back into focus. 

“Is he okay?” she asks Peter, standing up and moving past him before he gets a chance to answer. “What happened?”

“I don’t know!” Peter says from where he’s following behind her. “I mean--I know the first part! He’s fine. Something about an urgent message. Or a death threat. Or both.”

She ignores that helpful commentary as she quickly makes her way through the ship, which isn’t difficult considering its size. She sees Rocket’s tail disappear up the ladder that leads to the cockpit. 

“You are not Gamora,” she hears Drax inform him. 

Groot is on the table in his pot, and as she approaches he holds out his arms and makes a small whining noise. Even though she is distracted by the various reasons to panic sitting inside her chest, she scoops his pot up as she passes and takes him with her up the ladder. 

“Oh, good idea!” Peter says from behind her, and she’s still discombobulated enough that it takes her a moment to realize that he means grabbing the pot.

Peter is very close behind her up the ladder, close enough that she can hear his heartbeat, can practically feel his breath on the back of her neck. After her dream, that’s simultaneously comforting and disconcerting, and she has to focus more than usual on her movements, especially climbing up one-handed.

When she finally emerges, Groot reaches out and grabs a lock of hair that’s come loose from the braid she’s worn to bed. 

“Hey!” she cries out, mostly in surprise, though a bit of the harshness in her tone is a vestige of the anger she’s been wearing like a shield.

Groot starts to cry immediately, and she pauses to soothe him the best she can, which is difficult with Rocket still cursing at Drax in the background. It’s also difficult when she feels so absolutely the villain.

“What the hell is going on?” Peter asks Drax. 

“It’s okay,” Gamora says softly to Groot, trying to soothe him and listen to the others at once. She holds her finger out, knowing how he likes to hold onto it for some reason. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you.” He grabs onto her finger and stops making that noise that breaks her heart, but there’s still tears streaming down his contorted little face. She feels absolutely horrible and confused, and worried because Drax is apparently too distracted by his argument with Rocket to answer Peter. 

Finally Peter sighs and pulls open a little compartment on the side of the navigator’s chair to pull a lollipop out of it. This is their “decoy candy stash,” as he’d called it; something to let the others find so that they won’t go looking for the real stash. 

He hands Groot the lollipop, and he abandons her finger to grab it, face immediately lighting up, eyes dry. 

“We can’t just bribe him with candy for the rest of his life,” she says, though she’s relieved that the crying has stopped. 

“Why not?” Peter asks, like he’s genuinely confused. 

Deciding that she is not having that discussion right now, Gamora puts Groot down in one of the other chairs and turns to Rocket and Drax with her hands on her hips. “That’s enough. Drax, what the hell is going on?”

“He is angry at me for waking him!” says Drax, pointing at Rocket.

“Pretty sure we’re all mad at you for that, genius,” Rocket snaps. He picks up Groot’s pot before jumping up into the chair it was previously occupying. Between the lollipop and his presence, Groot’s gone from tears to elation.

“I didn’t call for Rocket,” Drax says to Gamora, like it ought to be obvious. “I called for you.”

“Yeah,” says Peter, dipping back into the decoy stash to stick a lollipop in his own mouth. When he continues, he talks around it so that the words are slightly distorted. “At the top of your lungs. What’d you think, that the rest of us wouldn’t hear you because you were saying her name?”

Gamora puts a hand on his arm to silently interrupt, then remembers the dream and pulls it away like his skin’s burned her. Peter gives her a confused look at that, but she ignores it, turning back to Drax. “ _Why_ were you calling for me? What is so urgent?”

“A message from Nebula!” he announces, _finally_. “The woman I blasted backwards with a powerful weapon!” He laughs loudly at the reference, oblivious to the way Gamora’s suddenly frozen, how Peter and Rocket’s eyes have both landed on her. 

“Pull it up,” she demands, but Drax is laughing too much to act quickly enough for her taste, so she reaches past him and hits the button herself.

The holo screen appears in front of the viewport, and Nebula’s face and upper body fills it. A murderous scowl is playing across her face, so she looks much the same as usual. 

“Hello, _sister_ ,” she says, sneering the word like it’s a curse. “I thought I would send you a message, let you know I’m all right. I’m sure you were worried sick.” She smirks, not nicely. “But worry no longer. I am alive. Your attempt to kill me did not succeed, I have emerged victorious!” 

“She cut her own hand off and fell from the ship,” Gamora mutters, shaking her head. 

“I am held by no ties to either you or Thanos any longer,” Nebula continues. “So you may rest assured that I will find you, and I will finish what we started on the Dark Aster.” 

“I betrayed Thanos first,” Gamora growls, the familiar sense of competition flaring in her belly. The sight of Nebula stirs a tornado of ugly emotions, intensified in the wake of the dream. She is _not_ relieved to see her sister alive, she tells herself. She is _not_ , even if she tried to saved Nebula herself. Even if she wanted Nebula to leave Thanos too. 

“I will see you soon, sister,” says Nebula’s image on the screen, almost as though reading her mind, though it’s clearly nothing more than a recording, nothing live or interactive about it. “And we will see what your new _friends_ think of you then.”

The screen goes black just as those words sink in, just as Gamora’s blood turns to ice, as her heart drops into the pit of her stomach. She thinks of Nebula as a child, of how they’d declared each other sisters and allies in the quiet one night. How Thanos had played them against each other the very next day. How Nebula’s managed to guess at her newest worst fear: not that she will die, but that her friends will start to view her as the enemy.

“What is she talking about?” Drax asks into the silence that follows that message. “What did we start on the Dark Aster? We began killing Ronan on the Dark Aster. But we have already finished that!”

“She’s talking about our fight,” Gamora says, looking at the view port as if the holo screen were still here to avoid making eye contact with any of the others. “She’s talking about killing me.”

“I am Groot?” 

“No, nobody is killin’ Gamora,” Rocket says. “We ain’t gonna let ‘em.” Gamora does look at him then, and he makes a face, apparently aware that he’s strayed close to the sentimental, by his standards. “She’s our best navigator. We can’t rely on Quill to get us places.”

“Hey!” Peter says, but it sounds half-hearted. She risks a glance at him and sees only concern in his gaze. Still, she can’t help but see flashes of her dream, of the way he’d looked at her in it. His eyes were cold and full of outright contempt at times. The dream was not real, but he may still end up looking at her like that because of Nebula, whatever she plans to do. 

“Do you think she was serious?” he asks her.

“Nebula is never anything but serious,” she says. 

“Let her find us!” Drax declares. “I will blast her backwards again, this time with my fists!” 

“With your fists?” Rocket asks incredulously. “That ain’t how fists work, idiot!”

“It is how Drax the Destroyer’s fists work!” booms Drax, punching the air once as if this proves his point. 

“Careful,” says Peter, as he narrowly misses actually hitting one of the consoles.

“I will not be careful in battle!” Drax proclaims. “I will spare no mercy.”

“If you wanna blast her,” says Rocket, “leave that to me. I’ll make a boom bigger than anything Ronan ever dreamed of!”

“I am Groot!” says Groot, then growls as fiercely as he can in his tiny voice, balling up his fists.

“No!” Gamora breaks in finally, torn between feeling touched by their immediate show of support and dread at the idea of them encountering any one of her enemies. Especially Nebula, who may not be quite her equal, but has always managed to hurt her the worst somehow. “No, none of you are going to fight Nebula. She’s dangerous!”

“And so are we!” says Drax, unperturbed. He brandishes his fists again.

“She might be dangerous,” Peter agrees, “but there’s only one of her. No way is she a match for all of the Guardians at once!”

“She is not a match for me on my own,” Gamora insists. “Leave her to me.”

“Hey,” Peter says softly, his hand on her shoulder. She sees it coming so she tells herself not to tense; she enjoys Peter’s casually intimate touches, but now… “We’re a team. We stick together. You gotta at least let us back you up.”

His voice is so sincere, his face so soft as he looks at her, so different from how he’d looked at her in the dream. 

“Fine,” she says, crossing her arms. “If I need back up, which I will not, you may assist me.”

“I am nobody’s back-up!” Drax declares.

Ignoring him, Rocket says, “So what are we supposed to do, then? Just wait around for the cyborg to come attack us, then stand around in a ring and watch you two fight?”

“No,” Gamora says. “We should find her first. We should also let the Nova Corps know she is alive.”

“We ain’t got time to go chasin’ your family,” Rocket says, apparently having a change of heart now that they’re talking about a preemptive approach. “We got money to make!”

She scowls. “There is more than one bounty out for her on Xandar, including one from the Nova Corps themselves.”

“Make sure you emphasize how dangerous she is when you tell them she’s alive,” Peter says. “Then maybe they’ll hike up the reward.” She turns her scowl on him and he holds his hands up. “And so that the public is warned.” 

“Warning the public is a good idea,” says Gamora, still irrationally irritated with him. “But we should not go after her solely for the money.”

It’s easy to blame her anger on what he’s just said about extorting the Nova Corps for reward money, about using one of the most painful realities of her life to get rich. In truth, though, she knows it’s the dream, knows she’s blaming him for something that may be nothing more than a figment of her subconscious. Still, though, it’s better than the panic that’s been crawling at the back of her neck since waking.

“Well I ain’t huntin’ her down just for the good of the public,” says Rocket, setting Groot’s pot on the chair and then slipping out of it. He moves to stand opposite Gamora and adjacent to Drax, which puts them all in a position that’s oddly reminiscent of the conversation when they had decided to make their stand against Ronan. 

“Is protecting the good of the public not what Guardians of the Galaxy ought to do?” asks Gamora, suddenly feeling a lot more confident in her stance on that, though just a few moments ago she was prepared to leave in pursuit of Nebula on her own.

“And what?” Rocket sneers. “Are we supposed to survive on the warm fuzzies we get from bein’ do-gooders?” 

“I am not here to be a bounty hunter,” she insists. 

“What is a warm fuzzy?” Drax asks, but no one responds. 

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with being a bounty hunter!” Rocket snaps, glaring at her. She sighs; she forgets how easily offended he can be. 

“No one said there was,” Peter cuts in, hands out in that placating way he has. 

“Is it an animal of some kind?” Drax asks again. 

“I bet you didn’t like it when _you_ were the bounty,” Gamora tells Peter. 

“Is being an assassin much better then?” Rocket asks condescendingly, in that way he had in the Kyln. She has to steel herself so not to visibly recoil. This is exactly what she was afraid would happen and it’s happening with only a message from Nebula, not even from meeting her. The others are remembering what she was, what she _is_ , that she doesn’t deserve to be here with them--

“Hey!” Peter says, pointing a finger at Rocket. “None of us are what we were anymore, okay? We’re Guardians now.” 

“We are all mighty warriors!” Drax agrees, apparently forgetting his query. He glances between Rocket and Peter. “And pilots. Which is also necessary!”

“Gee, thanks,” Rocket says, rubbing a paw over his face. “But none of that is gonna make us any units.”

“That’s why we have been taking jobs,” Gamora points out. 

“Yeah,” says Rocket, “only you’re suggestin’ that we go traipsin’ all over the galaxy to find your sister when it’s _not_ a job.”

“Getting to participate in battle is payment enough!” says Drax. “I will blast the blue woman and the warm fuzzies to the other end of the universe! Perhaps to another dimension!” He brandishes his knives, as though to demonstrate.

“The only one who does any _real_ blastin’ around here is _me!_ ” says Rocket, drawing himself up to his full height, which is still almost comically diminutive compared to Drax’s bulk. 

“Hey, I’ve got blasters too!” says Peter, apparently unable to ignore the bait for too long.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Rocket. “Those things you call blasters are basically just _farts_ compared to my bombs.”

Gamora is about to intervene, about to order them all to stop arguing, when Groot interrupts for her. He comes tearing into the circle they’ve made, shrieking so loudly that for a moment it seems like one of the ship’s alarms must have gone off. He pauses in front of Drax, then throws a clod of dirt at him.

She stares at him, as do all the others, argument forgotten. At least for the moment. Because there Groot is, standing on his own two feet, on thin, spindly legs, laughing at the tiny patch of dirt now on Drax’s shoulder. 

Into the silence, he proclaims, “I am Groot!” She’s gotten a lot better at understanding him, though she’s still got a long ways to go. But she knows enough to be able to tell that he wishes to join in on any ass-kicking, and that he believes he could take Drax in a fight. 

Peter is the first to get over his shock enough to speak. “Groot! You’re out of your pot!”

“I am Groot,” the little tree says. 

“What do you mean, _duh_?” Rocket asks. “Two seconds out of your pot and you’ve got that kind of attitude?” He’s grinning though, utterly unable to rein it in, so it kind of ruins the effect. 

“What is so impressive?” Drax mutters petulantly. “We can all walk.”

“I am Groot!” He balls his hands up into tiny fists and glares up at Drax. 

Gamora thinks she can see tears gathering in his eyes and, not wanting that to start again, she says, “We are _all_ very proud of you, Groot.”

She glares at Drax too, who just shrugs, but Groot turns to her with a huge smile on his little face and something in her chest feels a bit lighter. 

“Yeah!” says Peter. “We’re super proud! And you know what we do when we’re proud?”

Groot scrunches up his brow, equal parts curious and expectant. “I am Groot?”

“We get more candy!” Peter announces, stepping past Rocket to fish more out of the stash. This time he comes up with a small packet of gummies, handing them to Groot. 

“Peter,” Gamora admonishes half-heartedly. To be fair, she knows about as much about Groot’s natural diet as she does about parenting, but she can’t imagine forming these kinds of associations is healthy. Then again, it’s still worlds better than anything either she or Peter experienced as children. 

“I am Groot!” Groot says happily, taking the gummies and popping one into his mouth. He’s still so small that a single candy is about the size of his entire hand. 

Peter shrugs, giving Gamora his best innocent look.

Groot mumbles through his very full mouth, then holds his free hand up to Gamora. She can’t understand any of his actual words, but the intent is still perfectly clear -- he wants her to pick him up. She practically melts at that, stooping and very carefully lifting him. He snuggles against her chest immediately, still sucking on the candy. 

A great deal of warm affection floods her, as well as an almost equal amount of terror. This innocent creature is showing so much trust in her, so much trust that she doesn’t deserve. _All_ of these people trust her--well, to varying degrees, she thinks, eyeing Rocket; she’s not sure he really trusts any of them. But they do all trust her to a certain extent, despite knowing of her past. 

There is a big difference, though, in knowing _of_ her past in concept and truly seeing it in detail, encountering someone from it. Nebula knows how many horrible things she’s done; she did many of them by her side. If the others hear of some of those things, or even just realize how dangerous Nebula is, how dangerous her other enemies are...she is not convinced that this fragile, wonderful thing they have will last.

“I do not want you to get hurt because of me,” she tells the others again. “Because of someone who is coming after only me. I will find Nebula myself, and you can continue to take jobs, if you wish.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peter says immediately. Even Drax and Rocket shake their heads dismissively. “The Ravagers are after us because of me, you’ve never suggested I should have to face them myself.” 

“Well you should,” says Rocket, probably just to be belligerent.

Peter sighs. “We’re a _team_ , guys. That means we look out for one another. And it means that if someone’s after one of us, we _all_ take them on. That’s just how it is.”

“And why’s that?” asks Rocket, in the same affected tone. 

“Because we are family!” Drax interjects, sounding suddenly very sure of that answer. It’s only been a few weeks since he tried to kill her, Gamora thinks. Only a few weeks since he’d first conceded to the fact that they are his friends. And yet it feels entirely fitting, even in the aftermath of the dream.

“Yes,” says Peter. “We’re family. And also, we can do it because it’s right _and_ make some units at the same time.”

Rocket looks back and forth between them, then shakes his head. “Fine. We’ll get the blue chick and the units. Now can me and Groot go back to bed?” 

He reaches out, glaring until Gamora hands Groot to him, now fully asleep. Then he turns and stalks off.

“Hey,” says Peter, touching Gamora’s shoulder again. “You know what we do when our murderous siblings send us death threats?”

“What?” asks Gamora, though she has a feeling that she knows what the answer is going to be.

“Candy stash!” he says predictably, reaching into it yet again and coming up with yet another lollipop.

Gamora rolls her eyes but takes it, watching as Drax makes his way back toward the ladder too.

Peter leans in, lowering his voice to whisper conspiratorially. “Just wait til they go back to sleep. Then we’ll break out the hot chocolate!”

Despite the dream, she can’t help but smile.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the end!!! A very long chapter to cap it off

This dream is such a strange one that for a moment after she wakes from it, Gamora lies in bed, wondering if it was actually a memory. She has to wonder because to her sleep-addled mind, the thing that was so strange about this dream was how very normal it was. 

Aside from a few aspects of it, she supposes -- which now, after blinking back the sleep, seem like obvious red flags of a dream. She and the whole team had been sitting around the table, talking and eating; not unusual. But her chair had been very close to Peter’s. They tend to sit next to each other, it’s true, but not nearly on top of one another. He’d had his arm around her shoulders and she was leaning into him. He’d kissed her forehead at one point and she’d practically glowed. 

No, she _did_ glow. She remembers now: her silver blush had spread through almost her entire body. Everyone had seen and she didn’t care. 

She shudders, rubbing at her eyes. Then finally, she hears it again, the thing that must have woken her in the first place: a tiny, plaintive voice saying _”I am Groot!_ ” 

“Groot?” she says, sitting up in a rush. For a moment she thinks she must somehow _still_ be dreaming because he can’t be here. He sleeps in Rocket’s bunk, in his pot, so he can’t -- and then it all comes flooding back. Nebula’s message, the ensuing argument, Groot’s emergence, and now--

“I am Groot!” he says again, and this time he snakes a tiny pair of vines out along the privacy field, which makes it crackle and spark a bit in protest. That’s a feature intended just to warn people not to run into it, but it clearly scares Groot, judging by the tiny whimper he makes.

“I am Groot!” he repeats a third time, now sounding on the verge of tears.

“I’m here,” says Gamora, rushing to deactivate the field. 

Groot is standing there in front of her, shaking visibly, his tiny eyes round and shining with unshed tears. He doesn’t give her a chance to respond further, just snakes out his vines again and scrambles up onto the bed, immediately burying his face in her stomach.

“Hey, hey,” she says, trying to keep her voice soft despite her worry. She puts her hand on his back, but because of his diminutive size, she ends up covering his entire body. She can feel tiny tears against her sleep shirt. “What happened? Are you injured?” 

He shakes his head, which makes her heart rate calm down slightly. He’s got his arms grown long so they can wrap around her waist, holding himself against her. It’s strange, to feel such relative strength from so small a creature, but still know how delicate he is, how much he’s trusting her. It’s all she can do to keep her fingers from shaking as she strokes his back in what she hopes is a comforting manner. 

“Then what’s wrong?” she asks gently. 

He responds, but it’s muffled against her stomach and so tearful that there’s almost no inflection, giving her no hope of understanding him. One day she might, perhaps, when she’s gotten better at his language, but not yet. 

“Can you repeat that, Groot?” she requests. 

He turns his head, so that he’s no longer got his entire face buried in her stomach. There’s a tear rolling down one of his cheeks. “I am Groot.”

“Oh,” she breathes. “A bad dream.” Those are common around this ship, it seems. 

He nods, burying his face in her shirt again. He rubs his face up and down against the fabric and for a moment Gamora thinks he’s doing some sort of odd nuzzle, but then she realizes that he’s trying to wipe his tears without letting go of her. That melts her heart even further, but also makes her wonder yet again why he’s here. It isn’t just her customary surprise at anyone showing her such a kindness, but the fact that it’s _Groot_.

“Groot,” she says carefully, unsure whether he’s paying any attention while he continues to rub his face in a way that almost tickles, “where’s Rocket? Is he all right?”

Groot mumbles his answer again but he’s crying less now, inflecting clearly enough that she gathers Rocket is still asleep. Not that she hasn’t already guessed that by the lack of angry curses.

“Okay,” says Gamora. “But...why not wake _him_ up when you had the nightmare?”

Groot lifts his face, meets her eyes as he speaks so that there’s no mistaking his answer this time. Yet she continues to gape at him for a moment, is certain that she must somehow have heard wrong. There simply is no other explanation for anyone wanting comfort from _her_ in particular. 

“Me?” she asks, trying to keep the disbelief out of her voice, but she just has to be sure she hasn’t misunderstood. Her understanding of Groot’s language is far from perfect, after all. 

He nods, looking up at her with his wide eyes, shining with tears, expecting something from her that she has no idea how to give. She can’t imagine what he wants her to do, what way he’s got in mind that she’s going to solve this for him. She can’t even control her own dreams, let alone someone else’s. 

Then she thinks about Peter, not that that’s rare for her lately. She thinks of conversations late at night in the cockpit, or in the gym, or over breakfast when the others are still asleep; that way he has of getting her to talk without prying, and how she always ends up feeling better after, though the problem itself remains far from solved. 

“What happened in your dream?” she asks at last, somewhat stiffly but hoping he won’t notice. 

“I am Groot,” he says, leftover fear clear on his face. 

“You were falling?” Gamora confirms. “Through the--darkness?”

He nods. “I am Groot.”

“Oh, and your pot was above you?” she says, beginning to understand.

“I am Groot!” 

“But you couldn’t reach it,” she says, not a question this time. She’s not surprised, now that she knows. It’s his first night sleeping outside his pot. 

Groot nods again, then continues talking. It turns into rapid rambling as he continues, the tears starting to flow again. He doesn’t bury his face, though, and after an initial moment of panic, Gamora finds that she can understand him just fine as long as she doesn’t think about it too hard, just lets herself trust her instincts.

“So you tried to reach your pot,” says Gamora, paraphrasing as he talks. She wants to be sure she’s correct in her interpretations but it also seems to make him feel validated, understood. “But you couldn’t reach it, and then you fell...and then you were in space?”

Groot sniffles at that, though it’s clearly assent. She remembers her own moments in open space, the brutal absolute cold of it, the certainty of death. The way, after years of thinking she would welcome her own end, she had suddenly found herself terrified. She wonders whether Groot might be somehow sharing a fragment of memory with his predecessor, dreaming phantoms of the Dark Aster plummeting to its own demise. 

“I am Groot,” he whispers, like he’s been saving this part, afraid to say it out loud. 

“We were up there with the pot too?” she asks, not really a question since she’s pretty sure she’s understanding him. He nods anyway. She bites her lip as she looks at him, now wondering if it’s memory or if, like her, he’s afraid of losing his family. 

“Hey,” Gamora says, beginning to speak before she’s entirely sure what she’s going to say. That strikes her as something Peter would do, and for some bizarre reason that gives her the confidence to continue. “If your dream were real, and we were up there watching you fall, you know we’d stop at nothing to save you, right? 

His little chin wobbles. “I am Groot?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing at all.” He rewards her with a watery smile, and her heart feels lighter again. “Do you want to try to go back to sleep now?”

His smile instantly falls again and she kicks herself; wrong move. Terrified that the progress is going to be reversed, she frantically tries to come up with a solution. All her mind supplies her with is: What would Peter do?

Thankfully, she knows exactly what he would do. 

“Okay,” she says. “You know what cures bad dreams?”

“I am Groot?” He wipes at his eyes again, then leans down and wipes his nose on the hem of her shirt. It ought to disgust her but somehow it doesn’t; all she can focus on is the way his face and tone have brightened again. He’s all pure innocent curiosity now, trusting her to have the answer. She only hopes that it holds up.

“Hot chocolate!” she answers, then realizes that she’s managed to emulate Peter’s tone, too. A few weeks ago she thinks that would have horrified her; now she feels a little swell of pride.

“I am Groot!” He practically bounces with enthusiasm at that, and her heart swells again. He hasn’t gotten to taste hot chocolate yet, at least as far as she knows. He’s had a few pieces of plain chocolate -- the light kind -- and loved it, but mostly she and Peter have kept the stash of it a secret. Their secret, for late nights just like this one. 

“I think you’re ready for it, now that you’re out of your pot,” she tells him. He’s spent the whole day running around, declaring that he’s _“big”_ now; she figures he will enjoy the sense of importance.

Sure enough, his smile widens and he stands up as straight as he can. “I am Groot!”

“Okay then,” she says. “Let’s go.” She scoops him up and delicately sets him on her shoulder. He holds onto her hair as she stands up and she lets him; she doesn’t normally like people to touch her hair, but she finds she doesn’t mind with Groot.

They reach what passes for the Milano’s kitchen, which is about as large as the tiny one in the Nova hotel room, and even less equipped. Thankfully, though, it’s all they need. 

“Can I trust you not to tell the others about this?” she asks, well aware that there’s a good chance she can’t. She sets him down on the table, and he nods vigorously, eyes wide like this is the most important thing he’s ever been tasked with. 

Their hot chocolate stash is separate from both candy stashes, so she figures it’s okay to let Groot in on this secret. Peter was eager to show her the compartment behind the kitchen’s tiny storage area, which she reveals now by pulling one of the drawers all the way out of its frame. 

Groot’s eyes widen even more at that, until it’s almost comical. He crawls to the edge of the table, clearly wanting to see more closely.

“Careful,” Gamora warns. She pulls out a packet of hot chocolate from the compartment, then hands it to Groot to examine. 

She watches, charmed, as he turns it over in his tiny hands, then shakes it. This particular mix consists of little pieces of chocolate that are made to be melted in a pan and they make a soft rattling noise as they move. Groot giggles, appearing to momentarily forget about everything but the sounds he’s making. He holds the packet over his head, shaking it like some sort of a percussion instrument as he dances.

Gamora laughs too, then pretends to shake her shoulders and her hips a little in the rhythm with him. It happens so naturally that she doesn’t even think about what she’s doing. It doesn’t even occur to her to think about it as anything other than _right._

“I am Groot!” he says, dancing more vigorously; a request for music. He’s always loved Peter’s music, nearly as much as Peter himself, taking every opportunity to dance to it. 

“Perhaps not while the others are asleep,” she says gently. Groot pouts, and she quickly adds, “But we do get hot chocolate while everyone else is asleep.” 

“I am Groot!” He cheers, easily placated. She grabs the packet, and Groot, letting him sit on her shoulder again so he can watch as she prepares the hot chocolate. She’s seen Peter do it enough times that she finds it simple enough. Amazingly, she manages to get the ingredients into the pot without spilling any. She will have to tell Peter that it _is_ physically possible. 

“Now it just needs to heat up for a minute,” she tells Groot, finally looking up from the pot once she’s got everything in. It’s only then that she realizes Groot hasn’t actually been watching; he’s been too busy arranging a tiny flower in her hair, a look of intense concentration on his face. 

“Groot,” she breathes. “Did you grow that?”

“I am Groot!” he says proudly, an affirmative.

She has a sudden flash of memory: Groot on Knowhere, sprouting flowers for the children who’d looked to have been without kindness for most of their lives. Groot on the Dark Aster, lighting their way with a shower of spores. Groot surrounding them with his body, with his _soul._ Giving his life for theirs.

“It’s beautiful,” says Gamora, her throat tight again. She knows that he is an individual, that he is not simply his predecessor reborn. This Groot is his own person. And yet, he has the same pure love underneath the tough, impish exterior. The same goodness of heart. 

“I am Groot!” he practically purrs, equally pleased with her reaction. He pats the flower, which oddly seems to make it perk up a bit more. 

“I love it,” she says warmly. The hot chocolate is ready, fully mixed and warmed in the pan. She glances at Groot, who’s watching it again, at least for now. “Time to pour this into cups. Ready?”

“I am Groot!” He watches with what appears to be rapt attention as she pours some chocolate into two mugs. At one point, he tries to snake his vines out to touch it and she has to gently nudge them away. 

“It’s too hot,” she tells him firmly, even in the face of his pout. “We have to let it cool for a couple minutes. You don’t want to burn yourself, do you?”

He continues pouting, apparently unconcerned with such minor details as burns. She is not, though, so she decides she’s got to keep him distracted so he doesn’t try to drink it right away or start crying again. “How about you show me how you can grow those flowers while we wait?”

That seems to cheer him up, so she carries him and the two mugs back to the table. He remains on her shoulder and holds his hand out in front of him. It appears to cost him more concentration than his predecessor, though that’s probably to do with his young age or lack of practice. He squints, and after a few seconds a tiny flower grows out of his palm. 

“I am Groot!” he announces proudly, picking it and holding it out to her.

Gamora takes it very gently between two fingertips. It’s barely the size of her fingernail, but perfect and beautiful, so white it practically glows in the low light of the ship’s night cycle.

“That’s great,” she tells him. She wonders for a moment how long he’s been holding out on her, then decides to just ask. “When did you learn to do that?”

He blinks at her. “I am Groot!”

“This was your first one?” asks Gamora, gesturing to the flower in her hair. It probably shouldn’t be a surprise, yet she finds herself strangely touched by the fact that he’s chosen to do this for her. “But how did you know you could do it?”

Groot shrugs. “I am Groot?”

“ _Oh,_ ” she whispers at his response, so overwhelmed that she can’t find any other words. She isn’t sure whether she could paraphrase his response exactly, but she understands the gist without question: He didn’t try to grow the first flower intentionally, just found himself overwhelmed with love for her and then it happened. She thinks of her own silver blush, then leans over and kisses the top of Groot’s head.

His smile is radiant, and his little arms warm as he hugs her neck--or attempts to; her hair gets in the way, and his arms are so small when he’s not growing them out, he gets them less than half way around. Still, she can feel the affection in the gesture, and returns it as best as she can with her hand on his back. 

“Do you want to find a place for this one too?” she asks when he lets go, holding out the flower to him. 

He nods and eagerly takes it back, then fixes it in her hair near the other one. “I am Groot!”

“It is very pretty,” she agrees, watching him grow yet another and place that one in her hair too; then another, each one seeming to come easier than the last. They are almost like physical representations of love, she thinks, given what he’s told her, and she finds it difficult to keep her eyes from watering. 

She also thinks that she’s going soft, but she can’t muster up the energy to find that a bad thing; at least not right now. 

“I am Groot?” he asks, still weaving flowers in her hair. 

“Let me check.” She dips her finger into one of the mugs. It’s not too hot for her, but her tolerance level is much, much higher than his, or at least she assumes so. “No, still too hot.”

“I am Groot!” he whines impatiently. He shifts back further on her shoulder and continues growing flowers, now faster and with less apparent effort. She wonders whether it’s practice or if it’s just because he’s happy, the vestiges of his nightmare entirely forgotten.

“Don’t exhaust yourself,” she warns gently, though there’s no actual chiding in her tone. 

“I am Groot!” he counters, growing another flower, this one with a few tiny vines attached. He uses those to capture a few locks of her hair, twisting them into a style that’s not quite a tiny braid. 

She laughs, delighted. “True, true. You _are_ supposed to be going back to sleep eventually. But that still seems like a lot of flowers!”

“I am Groot!” he chirps, and produces one more flower, as though just to be ornery. 

Gamora shakes her head, but then looks up abruptly. There are footsteps approaching, she realizes suddenly. They stand out plainly to her enhanced ears, though they’re quiet and careful. 

Groot, who apparently doesn’t hear them, asks, “I am Groot?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says. Another second allows her to identify the footfalls as Peter’s; if that wasn’t enough, another second and she can make out his heartbeat as well, distinctive to her ears, though she tries to deny that to herself. 

A second more and Peter steps into the room, clad in a typical t-shirt and boxers combination. She is grateful he’s wearing a shirt at all, though it is quite tight. His hair is disheveled and he scrubs a hand over his face as he yawns. 

He stops when he sees them, though he doesn’t seem surprised. She wonders if Groot’s lack of “inside voice,” as Peter calls it, woke him up, or if it was something in his own dreams. 

His eyes scan over the tiny kitchen area, the mugs on the table, her hair, and he smiles crookedly. “How come I wasn’t invited to this party?”

“I am Groot!” the little tree declares. He seems pleased to see Peter, though not quite as openly affectionate as he’s been towards her, she thinks with a note of pride that she can’t suppress. 

Peter, whose understanding of Groot isn’t as good as hers, and whose brain is probably still sleep-addled, says. “Huh?”

“He says this is a party for people who are awake when everyone else is asleep,” Gamora translates. 

“Well then I should totally be invited,” says Peter, yawning again and sitting down across from Gamora. He looks tired enough to worry her a bit, though mostly she's just pleased by his presence, as she always is these days. 

“I am Groot!” Groot sticks his tongue out at Peter, then produces yet another flower and offers it to him. 

Peter shakes his head, seeming to need no translation this time. “Being invited means you gotta know you're invited somehow, Bud.” He takes the flower and tucks it deftly behind his ear. “It's not exactly an invitation if it's just implied.”

Groot pouts. “I am Groot!”

“That is fair,” says Gamora. “I did tell him that he shouldn't bother you or anyone else during the night.”

“Ah,” says Peter, grinning. “So you're the one who's been holding out on me! And you're having hot chocolate without me too, I see.”

It occurs to her now that she maybe should have asked him before sharing the hot chocolate with Groot, but he doesn’t actually seem upset, just amused; teasing her. 

“I am Groot!” he declares, peering into one of the mugs again. 

Peter’s smile grows softer and aimed at her; that he understood, apparently. “Yeah, I have heard that it cures bad dreams.” 

She finds herself blushing, though there’s no reason to. So Peter knows she passed on his hot chocolate “wisdom,” used it to comfort Groot. Not a big deal. He’s already looked away, instead focusing on the pot she’d used to heat the chocolate. “I see you didn’t save me any.”

“You can have some of mine,” Gamora offers, instantly feeling bad, though it’s not like she’d known Peter was going to come out here. Still, he is the one who introduced her to hot chocolate, the reason they have it on the ship in the first place. He deserves it far more than she does. 

“Oh!” He looks at her, surprised. She is about to retract that offer, thinking perhaps she’s offended him somehow or overstepped; she has a sudden, vivid flash of her nightmare from the night before, of Peter telling her he can’t do this, leaving the ship-- 

But he smiles again instead. “Are you sure? I can always make more.” 

“You introduced me to it,” says Gamora, pushing the mug across the table toward him. She’s pretty sure it’s cooled down enough not to scald him, finally. And even if it hasn’t, he should be experienced enough to protect himself. “You have more than earned your share.”

His grin turns crooked, more than a little bit impish as he picks up the mug and takes a careful sip, then licks the chocolate off of his upper lip. “Sharing hot chocolate, the most precious substance in the universe, with me! You really _must_ love me.”

Gamora freezes at that. For an instant she feels completely surreal, thinks she must still be dreaming. Perhaps a pleasant one, or perhaps a nightmare in which she’s overstepped again, in which he’s discovered her silver and is about to be horrified by it. Or, worse, that it _isn’t_ a dream, that instead the things her subconscious has been trying to warn her about are coming true. 

“I am Groot!” Groot interrupts, almost as though sensing her discomfort. 

“True!” she says immediately. “I _did_ share it with him first.”

“Guess that means she loves you too, bud,” Peter says with a laugh. 

She untenses slightly, though she’s still wary, heart still galloping away in her chest. He doesn’t look like he’s about to leave or tell her to, judging by the way he spreads out in his chair with that same easy comfort he always seems to have. He must have meant the statement casually, she tells herself; an off-hand comment, flippant in the way he says all sorts of stuff. 

“I am Groot!” He offers her another little flower, which she takes with determinedly steady fingers and tucks behind her ear. 

“Thank you,” she says, smiling through her sudden anxious energy. Half to distract herself, she dips her finger into the hot chocolate again. “Okay, Groot, I think it’s cool enough to drink now.”

He cheers and dives for the mug; he has to grip the rim with his hands and bend his head over it in order to slurp the liquid inside. Perhaps they should get some Groot-sized cups. 

“That’s one way to do it,” Peter says, sounding amused. She risks a glance over at him, finds him taking another sip from the mug as he watches Groot. He meets her gaze and slides the mug back to her easily, like they drink from the same cup all the time. 

Gamora picks it up and takes her own sip, the chocolate warm and sweet and good. She’s done an undeniably good job of making it, despite it being her first time doing more than watching. It’s impossible to stay too anxious while drinking this; perhaps it cures waking nightmares as well as sleeping ones. 

Groot seems equally delighted, continuing to slurp and making little happy noises in between swallows. She thinks for a moment about sharing other types of chocolate with him, about the joy of watching him discover such goodness as she so recently has. She wants Groot to grow up with all of the things she’s been missing -- not just food, but warmth and love and safety too. 

Taking another sip of hot chocolate, Gamora slides the mug back across the table to Peter. Their knees aren’t quite touching, though the space is small enough that they would be if she sat all the way forward in her chair. Still, she can practically feel the warmth radiating off of him. She imagines reaching across the table, taking his hand and just holding it, not worrying about what he might think or which of the others might see them. She imagines having the right to do that, being the person he’s chosen to let into his space that way.

Maybe he’d sit next to her, she thinks, her mind getting carried away. He could put his arm around her that way, maybe as they watch Groot run around on a sugar high. Or they could have hot chocolate in bed, leaning against each other as they pass the mug back and forth, watching something on a holo. He’d turn his head to kiss the side of hers, pulling her just that bit closer--

“Whoa!” Peter says suddenly, and Gamora can’t keep herself from jumping slightly in her seat out of surprise. She panics, wondering if he’s sensed her thoughts somehow, if she’s said any of that out loud, if she’s perhaps reached for his hand without realizing. 

But no. His attention is focused on Groot, who has fallen onto his back, probably after attempting to balance further on the mug. She’s momentarily in a different sort of panic, on the alert for more tears, but then Peter laughs, which instantly makes Groot laugh too, apparently deciding that this is funny and not upsetting. 

“We’re probably gonna need to get some smaller cups,” Peter says, echoing a thought she’d had earlier. She laughs along with them, as casually as she can, still distracted by the images she’d conjured up in her head. Perhaps their minds wander along the same paths in more ways than one; maybe he’s been having dreams like hers, and _hopes_ like hers. 

Still, she cannot risk being the one to find out, cannot risk having something akin to her nightmare come true if it turns out that she is wrong. She can have him as a friend, because that is safe. (And strange to think how it’s taken a scant few weeks to go from fearing any sort of true connection to panicking about its potential loss.)

“Here,” says Peter, letting Groot hold one of his fingers to pull himself up. Then he cups his palm over the side of the mug, tipping it forward for Groot so that the hot chocolate comes within a few millimeters of the edge. For a moment she can’t help noticing how large Peter’s hand is in relation to both the mug and Groot...how large it is in general, really. It isn’t the first time she’s noticed that, but it seems magnified now in the gentleness of his touch with Groot.

Then Groot leans forward, promptly planting his entire face into the hot chocolate, and all Gamora can do is laugh.

* * *

It’s a good thing she doesn’t need that much sleep, because--for far from the first time in her life--she finds herself lying awake at night, unable to attain it. 

It’s only been a few days since they received Nebula’s threatening message and they’ve already gotten a lead on her potential whereabouts, and possibly her goal. They’ve been working on tracking her down -- Rocket having been placated by the amount of money Xandar is offering for her bounty. Though Nebula makes herself difficult to find, Gamora has no doubt they will soon. What happens once they do, however, is what is concerning her. 

She has no desire to kill Nebula, but if she attempts to kill any of her new friends, she is not going to stand by and let her. And knowing Nebula…

She shakes her head and sits up. It’s time to admit defeat in her search for sleep, and she needs a distraction. 

Her legs carry her instinctively towards the gym, and she’s got no issues following that instinct. She’s got some restless energy to get rid of and taking it out on a sturdy punching bag is her go-to. 

At least tonight, she hasn’t been dreaming about Peter, or fantasizing about Peter, or even worrying about Peter, except with regards to keeping Nebula from harming anyone in her new family. She’s been far too anxious, and much as she hates the anxiety, it’s a welcome alternative to the pesky sex dreams. 

And yet despite -- or perhaps _because of_ that thought -- she finds herself stopping in front of Peter’s bunk, as she has so many times before on her way to and from the gym. This time, though, there are no embarrassing noises coming from behind the privacy field. No groaning or grunting, no quickening of breath or heartbeat. Nothing at all, because his bunk is empty. He hasn’t even bothered to leave the field up, which means she gets a full view of the pile of dirty laundry sitting at the end of his bunk.

She isn’t focused on that, though. Instead she has a moment of panic as she thinks about Nebula, thinks that something’s happened, that somehow she’s managed to get aboard and kidnap Peter, perhaps torture him -- and then the thoughts vanish just as abruptly as she hears his footfalls overhead, from the vague direction of the cockpit.

She closes her eyes as the relief flows through her, which quickly turns into curiosity. She’s not surprised that he’s awake and in the cockpit, as she’s found him there multiple times when he’s also lost his battle for sleep. It’s his footsteps that are unusual. They don’t sound like his normal steps when he’s just walking from one spot to another, or like the pacing she’ll occasionally hear, or the jumps that come with his energetic dancing. They’re more rhythmic and slow.

She glances once in the direction of the cargo bay, thinking she should just go and work out like she was originally going to, but curiosity gets the better of her; it doesn’t take her long to head towards the ladder instead. 

She can hear his music, a slow song from his newer mix. It’s quite a pleasant one. She takes the steps carefully anyway, taking care to make her own footfalls silent -- just because she doesn’t want to disturb him, of course. It’s got nothing to do with wanting to make sure she sees what he’s doing before he realizes she’s there and potentially stops. 

Thankfully, though Peter is quite aware of his environment when he needs to be, when he’s on the ship and feels safe, he can be pretty oblivious. 

Right now, he’s actually got his eyes closed, the expression on his face half concentration and half something that might be bliss. He appears to be mostly swaying to the music, which is significantly slower than most of the songs he chooses to dance to. He is shuffling his feet occasionally, though, explaining the sounds she’d heard from below. He’s also holding out his arms, one higher and the other lower, like he’s holding on to some sort of invisible partner.

For a moment, Gamora wonders if he’s sleep-walking somehow. Sleep dancing? Is that even a thing that Terrans are capable of doing? Not that Peter has ever failed to surprise her…

But then it comes to her: For all the times she’s seen him dance, he’s always done it by himself, or in the larger group of them. The closest she’s ever seen him come to having a partner has been when he was teaching Groot to dance in his pot, and that was only a form of mimicry. What he’s doing right now is practice. In the middle of the night, probably so that he can have something approaching privacy.

As she continues watching, Peter stumbles a bit, running into the pilot’s seat because his eyes are still closed. 

She ducks down quickly so her head is beneath the entrance, knowing he’ll probably open his eyes now. She can hear him cursing softly but remains out of sight, not wanting him to know she saw him doing...that. Though Peter has never been embarrassed about his dancing before, she has never seen him do _that_ type of dance before. It was so...intimate. 

All those times that he’s tried to get her to dance, and she’s automatically said _no_. She’s sure she would embarrass herself, or worse: that she’d fall into some kind of...trance the way she did on Knowhere when they weren’t doing anything but swaying, and she’d nearly let him kiss her. 

That hasn’t stopped Peter’s determination to dance with her, apparently. Because that _has_ to be what he’s practicing for. Something about that makes her heart flutter in her chest, in a way that is somehow pleasant and sort of nausea-inducing all at once. He cares enough about this...about _her_...to practice the type of dance you’d do with two people. An _intimate_ sort of dance…

She shakes her head, angry at herself. She’s reading more into this than there is. 

Gamora bites her lip and tries to make a decision: She ought to stop thinking about this, ought to pretend she was never here at all. She ought to go to the gym and beat the shit out of the punching bag. She should have just done that in the first place, instead of getting distracted by Peter for...for the millionth time. At least beating up the punching bag will help with her anger. She can pretend to be beating up herself. 

“Gamora?” comes Peter’s voice, shocking her out of her thoughts.

She looks up, sees him peering over the edge of the ladder, and curses herself silently. Stupid, stupid. The entire point of this was to avoid another late-night encounter with him, to act like she is not some sort of lovesick idiot. To avoid embarrassing either one of them. Some job she’s done of that.

“I was just--coming to investigate the noise,” she says lamely. “It sounded like you were cursing. I thought you might have been injured.”

“Oh!” He scratches the back of his head, a delicate flush blooming across his cheeks and neck. “I was just…” He glances backwards. The song has changed now, one of the ones with a faster beat. His face lights up. “Dancing! I _was_ dancing! Nothing like a little middle of the night dancing!” 

“Right,” she says slowly. Technically, he is not lying. And she’d have no interest in calling him out even if he were. But she’s got no idea where to go from here, what to say. Her stated purpose was finding out whether or not he was injured, which she’s now accomplished; it would be the perfect excuse to descend the stairs and go work out. But she finds her feet rooted to the spot, not wanting to carry her away from him. 

“Care to join me?” Peter asks, holding a hand out to her. 

She looks up at him, prepared to utter her characteristic _I don’t dance_. But then she thinks about him up here, practicing a type of dancing he’s clearly unfamiliar with, most likely in the hopes that he’ll have a partner to teach... her, specifically, she can’t help but think. And despite that hope shining in his eyes that he never seems to lose, his smile is almost...resigned. Like he’s already preparing himself to be rejected. 

“I--” she says uncertainly. “I was going to go work out.”

His face falls a bit, like she's already said no. Like he's heard exactly the answer he was expecting. But then he pauses and shakes himself, as if realizing that she hasn't actually declined yet. 

“It's the middle of the night,” he says a bit incredulously, then moves the hand he's been holding out to scratch his head again. 

“Yes,” she allows, momentarily stymied before an appropriate response comes to her. “Well, you were dancing in the middle of the night. Nothing like a little…middle of the night punching bag...ing?”

Peter snorts. “You and that punching bag. You sure you're not having a juicy love affair with it?”

She wrinkles her nose, disgusted. “That is ridiculous. And besides, it would be a terrible way to treat a lover.”

“True,” he agrees, then brightens again. “Well hey, dancing is a good workout too!”

“Is it?” she asks skeptically. Perhaps the way he normally dances provides some cardio, but the way she saw him practicing… Then again, maybe he’s not planning on dancing with her the way he was practicing. That could have been meant for something else entirely and her imagination--which is entirely too over-active lately--has just gotten the better of her. 

“Yeah!” he says. “I can show you!” He holds out his hand again, after dropping it in disappointment earlier. And for some reason, right now she’s willing to do just about anything to keep that smile on his face; keep disappointment from coming back. No matter what kind of dancing he’s got in mind. 

“Okay,” she finds herself saying. 

“Wha--wait, really?” Peter asks, eyes widened a degree that’s nearly comical. 

“Sure,” she says, totally casually, as if the indecision isn’t roiling away in her stomach. She climbs the ladder, Peter gaping at her like a fish the whole time, and stands opposite him once she’s ascended, no idea what to do now. 

“I thought--” says Peter, still gaping, apparently unsure of what to do either. “I thought you didn’t dance.”

She considers this: It could be an out, and she does sort of want one, particularly since she’s pretty sure she’s about to embarrass herself either by letting her ridiculous attraction to him carry her away or by simply failing to be a good dancer. She has never really tried it, after all. And she’s fairly certain it’s nothing like hand to hand combat or sword fighting. 

“Well I don’t,” says Gamora. “I mean...neither warriors nor assassins have need of skills in...dancing. So my training under Thanos did not include it.”

“And your life under Thanos was only training,” says Peter, not a question. He knows her well enough by now to be certain of the accuracy of that statement.

“Precisely,” she agrees. “So if you would like me to dance with you, then you will need to teach me how.”

“Oh!” says Peter, the grin and the bravado making a quick resurgence. “Well yeah, duh! Of course I’m gonna show you. Being an awesome dance teacher is another Star-Lord specialty.”

“Of course,” she echoes, and still does not mention that she’s just caught him practicing his own skills.

“So, uh, lemme change the song!” he says, practically bouncing on his feet over to the chair that’s usually hers, his chosen place for the Walkman tonight, apparently. The song playing is still the upbeat one from before about a girl named _Brandy_. “We gotta have the right rhythm to dance to!” 

“What makes this the wrong rhythm?” she asks, curious despite herself. 

“It’s too fast,” he says as he opens up the Walkman to pop that mixtape out. He digs into his pocket and fishes out another tape that looks the same, that must be the original mix his mother gave him. Once he’s got it in, he hits the button she knows to be _fast forward_. He’d explained it all to her once, another late night when neither of them could sleep. 

He’s biting his lip in concentration and she’s definitely not staring at that. “You know I’m an expert at landing on the song I want,” he explains, eyes still trained on the device. 

“Another Star-Lord specialty,” she says, attempting to sound aloof but probably coming off affectionate.

“Definitely,” he says confidently. Unsurprisingly, when he releases his thumb, there’s silence for just a second before some familiar opening strains begin to play. His resulting grin is smug but somehow not obnoxious. 

She recognizes the song immediately: It’s the one he first played for her on Knowhere, her first introduction to Terran music. Also her first introduction to something intangibly, quintessentially _Peter_. A Star-Lord specialty, she thinks. 

It isn’t as though she hasn’t heard this song again in the intervening weeks, but hearing it now still makes her stomach do a little flip. Half anxiety, half excitement. A part of her thinks this feels exactly fitting for what they are about to do. Another part of her thinks this is vindication of her fears, because clearly she is about to be hypnotized again, about to lose all control over herself and make rash decisions that could ruin so many things.

“You okay?” asks Peter, studying her face with intense concentration. 

“Yes,” Gamora says sharply. “Why would I not be? We have listened to this song many times before.”

He shakes his head a little, giving her one of those soft, knowing smiles. He clearly knows that she is lying, but he isn’t going to call her out on it right now. “No reason. Just checking. I always want you to be okay with whatever we do.”

She says nothing, unsure how to respond to that. She’s not used to that type of consideration--from anybody expect Peter, she realizes. He often checks in with her to make sure she’s okay, which at first annoyed her, because she’s perfectly capable of telling him if she’s not. But she knows now that he wants to be able to fix things before they get to the point that she’d have to tell him. Which is probably a lot of the reason she’d said yes to this in the first place: because she knows she can change her mind without him getting upset. 

Her mind remains unchanged, though, if still hesitant, so when Peter holds his hand out again, she places hers in it and lets him lead her to the back of the cockpit, where there’s slightly more room to move around. Not much, but more than the narrow space between one chair and another. 

“Okay,” he says, eagerness clear on his face. “So, put your hand on my shoulder.” 

She does, using the hand he’s not holding to grip his shoulder tightly, which makes him laugh. 

“You don’t have to do it that tight,” he says. “Not that I’m gonna complain.” 

He winks and she feels her face flush. She releases her hand so it’s barely brushing his shoulder now. 

“Try somewhere in between,” he says gently. “Like this.” He puts his own hand on her shoulder, the pressure light but there. 

It reminds her of the way he’d touched her in the candy store, of the way his arm had felt around her shoulders: Warm, and gentle, and also welcome. It reminds her of the way his touch had grounded her there, too, when she’d been feeling overwhelmed by the assault on her enhanced senses. That is how she’s coming to think of Peter in general: warm and gentle and sweet.

She adjusts her own hand on his shoulder, first lifting it entirely and shaking it out, as though that might somehow be able to get rid of the stiff awkwardness she feels. She has no idea how to be gentle, would previously have been horrified by the notion of trying at all. But she wants to learn, for him. Somehow, Peter makes it seem appealing. Like he does with so many things.

“Yeah, you got it!” he says warmly, as she adjusts her touch. She still shifts her hand once more, though, definitely only to make sure that she’s got it right and not at all because she enjoys the feeling of his shoulder under her fingers.

“Okay,” says Peter. “Now my hand goes on your waist.” He glances around, though it’s clearly one of his put-on acts. “You’re not gonna pull a sword on me, right?”

“I will make no promises,” she says, but can muster no real threat behind the words, nor would she really want to. The idea of hurting Peter is horrifying enough without thinking that she could possibly do it intentionally. 

Peter grins, so he clearly reads no threat in her words either. Still, he is slow and cautious when he puts his hand on her waist. She has plenty of time to pull away or tell him to stop. She does neither. The pressure of his hand there is the same as it had been on her shoulder, but somehow even more welcome. It makes her think of him moving that hand around to her abdomen, feeling the proof of her feelings for him there; or yet moving higher or lower, stroking along her body --

“This okay?” he asks. She wills the heat in her cheeks away. 

“It is fine,” she says stiffly. She clears her throat, then asks, “What do we do with our other hands?” She tries to picture it from the way he’d been practicing, but can’t. 

“We keep holding them together,” he says. “But out. Like this.” He moves their clasped hands so they’re holding them away from their bodies, arms bent at the elbows. 

She looks at their hands, surprised that that’s all it is. Her mind’s so wound up that she was picturing some sort of bizarre, totally embarrassing hand-kissing ritual or something. She _likes_ the way Peter holds her hand, though, even if this is far from the first time for that. He touches her hands like they are delicate, deserving of care. Like they aren’t weapons that have inflicted pain throughout the galaxy. She knows that he knows this truth, but he doesn’t seem to care.

“Why is my hand on your shoulder while yours is on my waist?” asks Gamora, narrowing her eyes a bit as she forces herself back into the present moment. It isn’t that she minds his hand on her waist -- the opposite, actually -- but she’s still keenly aware of that imbalance, and can’t help the instincts that prickle in the back of her mind, warning her she might still be taken advantage of. Might make a fool of herself, more like. 

“Oh,” says Peter, looking surprised by the question, then wholly flummoxed. “Because...Because that’s how dancing works? The guy puts his hand on the girl’s waist and the girl puts her--”

“I am not a _girl_ ,” Gamora interrupts, that word bringing up unpleasant associations with Thanos’s patronizing tone.

“Oh!” he says again, looking even more distressed this time. “Right, yeah, of course. Okay, well the--the Awesome Warrior Assassin’s hand goes on the--dude’s shoulder, and his goes on her waist.”

“What if people of the same gender wish to dance?” she asks, wondering how rigid these rules are. 

Peter shrugs. “They do eeny-meeny-miney-moe for it? Play rock paper scissors?” 

She blinks. “They--what? I don’t know what either of those things mean.”

“They’re--little games,” he says, shaking his head, like he regrets saying it. “Remind me to add that to the list of stuff I gotta show you. They’d be good for settling team arguments.” 

“All right,” she says skeptically. She is still curious, but he doesn’t seem to want to elaborate at the moment, so she refocuses. “Are you going to show me dancing first? Or is this it?”

“Well, almost!” he says. “We’re in position. Now all we gotta do is kinda move back and forth a bit!” He rocks his hips, moving his torso to the side. She stays as still as she can--his hand on her waist moves her somewhat--unsure if she’s supposed to copy him, or maybe move opposite. 

“It’s okay, you got this,” he says encouragingly. “Just move your body like mine.” He rocks his hips the other way now, but she remains stiff. 

“In the same direction?” she asks. He nods, and the next time he does it, she copies him, still feeling like she is doing something wrong. 

“Yeah,” says Peter, “exactly like that. You just kinda--feel the rhythm.”

She furrows her brow at him. “I do not know how to ‘feel the rhythm.’”

“Sure you do,” he counters, moving his hips a bit more and waiting for her to copy him, which she does after momentarily freezing to figure it out. “It’s not something you gotta learn.”

“Oh, so it’s a universal skill?” asks Gamora, though there’s only a hint of challenge in her voice now. “All life in the galaxy is born knowing how to ‘feel the rhythm’?”

“Oh, no no!” He shakes his head, looking somewhat horrified by that, or perhaps mildly offended. “No way. Not universal at all, it’s a very special ability! But you can’t learn it, you’re either born with it or you’re not.”

“And what if I am not?” Gamora challenges, looking down and realizing that he’s started moving his feet, slow side shuffling steps as he moves his hips. She’s been following him without even being aware of it.

“Ah!” says Peter, clearly very pleased to have been asked this question and have an opportunity to demonstrate his knowledge. “But I already know you are! Because I saw you feeling the rhythm on Knowhere.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh, is _that_ what I was feeling?”

“Well,” he says, a glint in his eye that she recognizes as a sign of imminent teasing. “You were obviously feeling some of the patented Star-Lord charm, too.”

She glares at him and hopes that covers for the damn blush that she keeps fighting off, only for it to come back with a vengeance. “If the main symptom of experiencing _Star-Lord charm_ is irritation, then yes, I suppose I was.”

He chuckles, seeming unbothered. “Well, hey, look, you’re doing great.” 

She looks down at their feet again to watch them move, which has the added bonus of giving her an excuse to look away from his face. But as soon as she starts thinking about her movements, suddenly her feet seem to forget where to go and she pauses, hesitating. 

“Don’t look at your feet,” he says patiently. She looks up reluctantly to find a gentle smile on his face. “Just look at me. Focus on the beat of the music.” 

“It would help if there was an actual method to this,” she grumbles. She tries, though, to do what she was before: following the rhythm, and Peter’s lead, without thinking about. It’s difficult to do when she’s _thinking_ about _not_ thinking. 

“Well now you’re just giving yourself stage fright,” he says helpfully, making his own movements a bit smaller again, more subtle so that they’re easier to match. She tries not to feel like that means she’s failing at this.

“We are not on a stage,” Gamora says stubbornly. She tries to take a bigger step than his last one, nearly trods on his foot, and stumbles a bit to avoid it. Peter catches and steadies her, so she glares at him, which he clearly deserves.

“And you’re not Drax,” says Peter. “But you definitely are giving yourself stage fright right now. Which is fine! It’s not, like, a sign of weakness or anything, lots of people have it. You just gotta be nicer to yourself.”

“Thanos would say you were trying to turn me soft,” says Gamora.

He shrugs without letting go of her at all, and also without missing a beat of the music. “So would Yondu. But maybe soft isn’t such a bad thing to be. Hey! I used to get really anxious whenever I had to read out loud in class. Do you know what my mom told me to do?”

She arches an eyebrow, certain he’s going to tell her this life-altering advice no matter what she says. “What?”

“She told me to picture the rest of the class in their underwear,” says Peter, as if this is the most mind-blowing strategy he’s ever heard. “Do you wanna try picturing me in my underwear?”

“No!” she says quickly and with such vehemence that Peter’s eyebrows shoot up. He doesn’t stop rocking, though, and she endeavors both to continue moving along with him and to rein her reaction in. Her first instinct had been that he can’t have said that by coincidence, that he must somehow know that her subconscious frequently plagues her with images of him in his underwear--and even less, lately. 

He couldn’t, though. Terrans possess no psychic abilities, and _she_ certainly wouldn’t have told him. And he seems only surprised by her reaction. 

“You have no modesty,” she says, trying to sound just mildly irritated rather than paranoid and embarrassed. “So I have seen you in your underwear before.” 

“You’re welcome,” he says, proving her point about the modesty. She glares at him and he adds, “Well, maybe that stage-fright strategy isn’t universal.” 

“I do not have stage-fright,” she insists. “I just...do not see how this is a workout.” 

“It totally could be if we did it long enough,” he says, waggling his eyebrows in a way that she’s learned means he’s trying to sound enticing. 

She shakes her head. “This is even less of a workout than lifting your Terran-level weights.” 

“Well, for you maybe,” says Peter. Then he brightens again. “Oh! Sometimes dancing involves lifting the other person up and spinning them around. You could do that to me!”

Gamora rolls her eyes. “I thought we had established that my lifting you would not be a workout.”

“I dunno,” says Peter, his fingers shifting ever so slightly on her waist. “I mean, we said that about lifting, but if there was also spinning?”

She sighs. “Still not a workout for me.”

“Okay,” he allows, still smiling, looking utterly unperturbed by her challenges. “But it would be _more_ of a workout than this is now!”

“I am _not_ going to lift you and spin you around,” Gamora says, allowing herself to laugh a bit at that mental image.

Peter’s expression turns decidedly smug. “Nah, I know. Not that you’re gonna get me to stop trying! But I _did_ get you to stop thinking about your feet! Stage fright vanquished!”

She blinks, realizing abruptly that they’ve moved around in a half-circle. Not only has she not stumbled, but she hasn’t even realized it.

“You are good at distractions,” she allows, because that is undeniable. 

“Thanks,” he says with clear pride. “But really, I think you’re just that good at dancing.”

“I do not dance,” she says, then immediately realizes the absurdity of making that statement while dancing. So she adds, “You had better not tell anybody about this.” 

“Does that mean I can’t enter us into a dancing competition?” he asks, and only laughs at her answering scowl. To be fair, she doesn’t think she’s managed to muster much actual ire in it. “Hey, don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. I know better than to get on your bad side.” 

“Good,” she says. Despite this type of dancing not being a workout in the slightest, she is finding it...enjoyable. It’s almost relaxing. 

Until a few seconds later, when Peter suddenly declares, “Time to spin!”

“Time to--what?” she asks. They seem to be spinning right now, she thinks, though very slowly, in a fairly wide circle. 

“Spin!” he repeats. “You just spin in a circle with your arms over your head, then spin back!” 

“I don’t--” The protest that she has no idea what he means by that is only half out of her mouth when he’s giving her waist a gentle push before letting go with that hand. 

“Don’t think about it!” he insists. 

And then she makes probably the most reckless decision she ever has in her life. Closing her eyes, she lets his hand propel her and spins. She moves like she would with her sword, spinning out and then back in again when he tugs ever so lightly at the hand he’s still holding. She opens her eyes as she comes back in again, sees that he’s smiling. And then she realizes belatedly that she’s brought her other arm up as though she actually _is_ brandishing a weapon. Stupid instincts. Stupid Peter, telling her not to think when that never leads to anything good at all. 

He grins. “Hey, that was great! Though I do seem to recall you promising not to draw your sword on me.”

“No,” she corrects him. “I distinctly recall that I said I made no promise of that.”

Peter laughs. “Okay, okay, fair enough. But hey, that was great!”

She rolls her eyes, resisting the urge to react when he puts his hand back on her waist. “No, it was not.”

“Yeah it was,” he repeats. “And you can’t say otherwise because you’ve already conceded that dancing is a Star-Lord specialty and not one of yours. Now put your hand back on my shoulder.”

“You are bossy when we’re dancing,” she says, but she doesn’t really mind, so she follows the instruction. Anyone else, she _would_ have drawn her sword on. But with anyone else, she’d have drawn her sword long before this point. 

“I’m just being an awesome teacher,” he says with a proud grin as they continue their circles. 

“Yes, you are,” she allows, because she’s feeling generous and...happy. Dancing with him actually feels nice, not that she’s ready to admit that out loud. 

There are a lot of things she’s not ready to admit out loud, that she perhaps never will be ready to admit. Now that she knows what it’s like to have Peter as a friend, in her life, she’s not sure she’ll ever be ready to do anything that could risk that. She may want more, but she already has more than she’s ever had in her life. 

“Another Star-Lord specialty,” he says, something softer in his smile. She realizes she’s been looking into his eyes for a while now, and fights not to tear them away. She’ll dance with him a while longer; keep that smile on his face as long as she can. 

“I suppose it is.”

This is enough, she thinks. Already more than she deserves. As long as she has Peter, and the team, in her life, that will be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading til the end!! We hope you've enjoyed this fic! Thank you to everyone who's read, left kudos, and commented!

**Author's Note:**

> We hope you like it so far!! Let us know what you think <3


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